Virtual environments are more popular than ever these days.  With so many different options to choose from you must choose wisely.  In the past I wrote a guide on How to Install VirtualBox from Sun.  From a desktop point of view, I still believe that VirtualBox is a more powerful and faster solution.  But from a server standpoint, VMware holds the crown.

There are many reasons for this that I really won’t go into in this guide.  I always try to provide a snippet on my views, but like to focus more on getting to the point and how to get things done.  Gotta stick to the scope of what you are writing!

In any case, VMware Server 2.0 is what we are here for.  VMware Server 2.0 is the free to use solution that installs on Windows and just about any (if not all) distributions of Linux!  Being very flexible it can fit into any IT environment.  They’ve even included a versatile web based interface to manage your virtual machines without having to log into them.  It is fairly resource hungry in my opinion, but is definitely handy.  It even includes support for the VIX API, which allows for custom written applications to interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.  I’ve not personally used the API, but I like the fact that there is an option to interface with your own stuff.  More features can be found here on the VMware home page.

Stuff to think about

When putting together a VM server, no matter what solution you use you must carefully choose your hardware.  Number one factor being your storage.  Disk I/O is the arch enemy when it comes to virtual machines on any platform.  It will make or break your virtual environment.  RAID is obviously highly recommended if you plan to run several guest operating systems.  On that same note, isolating your virtual machine storage (aka. datastore) from your host operating system.  VM’s like to use swap memory, and if your host shares the same spindle with your guests you have just shot yourself in the foot as virtual machine’s make their own “swap” file.  Doubling the load right there before you’ve really even started.  And obviously, running out of Hard drive space will obviously limit you to how many and how big your VM’s can grow.

Memory is your number two factor.  Like mentioned above, you could have several Tera-bytes of storage but without enough memory to allocate you are stuck!  Sure you could give each of your VM’s 256MB of ram, but you’ll then be depending on your virtual machine’s virtual memory slowing you down to a grinding halt.  With how cheap memory is these days it should not be overlooked.  But don’t forget, to use any memory over 3 gigs you must have a 64 bit operating system.  32bit just won’t cut it for a VMWare host machine.

Next would be the CPU(s).  As mentioned above, 64bit is a necessity. If you don’t have 64bit support, you can kiss all that extra memory goodbye.  You might have 8gigs of memory, but if you are running 32bit, nothing over 3gigs (give or take) will be usable.  The overall processing power is also a factor as each guest OS will have it’s toll on the CPU, so naturally multi-core SMP is a huge help.

Below I’ll list the hardware I use for a small production server used in my families home business.

  • AMD Phenom Quad Core CPU
  • 6 gigs of DDR2 Memory
  • 3Ware 9650SE SATAII PCIe Hardware RAID Controller
  • 4 – 250 Gigabyte Western Digital Caviar SATAII Hard Drives running in RAID 5 (64KB stripe)
  • 2 – 80 Gigabyte Western Digital Caviar SATAII Hard Drives running in RAID 1
  • Ubuntu Server 9.04 64bit (Host OS)
    • Windows Server 2003 Standard (Guest OS)
    • Windows XP (Guest OS)
    • FreeNAS (Guest OS)

To review, your hardware selection is critical.  A VM Host machine should always be carefully planned and executed.  It will save you a tremendous amount of time, headaches, and possibly your career as well!

Now that I’ve said my 2 cents, lets get to the fun stuff.

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