[codeofc]

Whats your favorite virtual machine? If I didn't mention, post it in the comments, and I'll add it.

[nooblet]

Are you actually looking for suggestions of VM software? I use Parallels.

This post has been edited by nooblet: 19 January 2012 - 10:35 PM

[nK0de]

VMWare

[iownall555]

Virtual Box. I tested that and VMWare, and I found that Virtual Box gave me a lot of the same features as VMWare except it is free.

[tlhIn`toq]

VMware since version 6. Currently using version 8

[lordofduct]

Virtual Box on my local machine for spinning up little virtuals to screw around with. It's server capabilities are balls, but on a local machine I don't really need it.

As for a server. We're (my roommate and I) installing XenServer/Center on my home server. We use it in the office and I really like it. We used VMWare up until we started using XenServer/Center in the office, and I've used VMWare at home, it was fine enough, no real complaints or anything. But I'm liking XenServer/Center a lot more as a dedicated server.



And I don't think this should be a 'Caffeine Lounge' thread...

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 20 January 2012 - 08:36 AM

[Dogstopper]

The Caffeine Lounge talks about geek technology (as stated in the forum description), and thus this qualifies.

I use VirtualBox because it is free, and being a student w/ a part time job, I don't have a lot of money. Thus, for me, it's one of the better options.

[baavgai]

I've been using VMWare since... 4? I've tried the others over time. Some have gotten pretty good, but none have ever really caught up to VMWare.

Don't get me wrong, I wish the free software options were viable alternatives; they simply aren't.

[lordofduct]

Dogstopper, on 20 January 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

The Caffeine Lounge talks about geek technology (as stated in the forum description), and thus this qualifies.

Was just saying, because I usually see threads similar to these computer subjects get moved.

[Slice]

Virtual box, but only when I want to try something that could potentially damage my OS. Don't really use it that often.

[Atli]

baavgai, on 20 January 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

Don't get me wrong, I wish the free software options were viable alternatives; they simply aren't.

How so? I keep hearing that VMWare is superior to VirtualBox when it comes to running servers, but I've always wondered what it is exactly that makes VirtualBox such a bad alternative.

I've currently got 4 VirtualBox VMs running in the background on my main PC, for various different test environments, and I'm always messing around with new VMs to test different OSs. (My latest being Windows 8. Had to go buy a new set of RAM chips to make that memory hungry thing work properly...)

[baavgai]

Atli, on 20 January 2012 - 06:10 PM, said:

How so?

In every environment I've tried this, identical guest configurations side by side, VMWare doesn't just preform better than VirtualBox, it's an order of magnitude better.

Windows 8 is a good example. It simply wouldn't work on my workstation. VMWare ran it without complaint.

On my desktop I've run a Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 production mirror full tilt. A similar setup crippled VirtualBox.

But really, that's just me and my workstation. If your workstation works for you, great. But VMWare offers significantly more than that.

Atli, on 20 January 2012 - 06:10 PM, said:

I've currently got 4 VirtualBox VMs running in the background on my main PC

This isn't really the kind of production environment I'd want to support. An ESX server is completely dedicated to only running VMWare instances.

I have a little one that me and the security guy share. It has at least a dozen live machines running at any given moment. I know he has a CA on it and a few other things that are constantly chewing their allotted CPU. I have the Windows box that I use as my primary development machine. Also some Windows and Linux servers.

One of our larger ESX servers that I don't maintain supports 20+ windows clients. Another has servers, both SQL Server and Oracle.

These things are dedicated and run 24/7. There are tools that allow them to be backed up live and even run boxes with fail over instances across multiple servers.

This, of course, does not come cheap. But for mission critical business applications, there is just no way you'd go with anything else.

[iownall555]

Would VMWare be more suited for an enterprise environment?

[nooblet]

Looks like I'm the only Parallels guy here lol

[SixOfEleven]

Lately I've been running Virtual Box for my VMs. I've found it offers the best 3D acceleration option for graphics. I'm into retro gaming and a lot of my older games won't work under Windows 7. I've tried the same games with VMWare and they just didn't work as well for me. If I was going to do something server related I'd probably end up using VMWare.