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Contents 
Virtual servers
MS Virtual Server 2005
VMware GSX Server 3
Specifications
How we tested
Editor's choice
About RMIT |
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VMware's GSX Server 3 is considerably more flexible than Microsoft's product in platform support. While Microsoft Virtual Server will only install on a Windows 2003 Server host system, VMware will happily run on a wider range of Windows servers from 2000 up as well as Linux servers.
The VM product, when compared to Microsoft's Release Candidate, is quite large with GSX Server running to 88MB and VirtualCenter another 66MB.
When installing VMware on our Windows 2003 Server platform the only requirement over the "vanilla" server configuration was the installation of IIS, a quick and painless upgrade. The installation of the GSX Server product was very straightforward and surprisingly quick.
More importantly, setting up VMs under VMware is a breath of fresh air compared to Microsoft's stuffy and not particularly user-friendly approach.
We set up two VMs under VMware. First off, we simply chose the path of least resistance, that is selected the "Typical" options for the setup. This takes care of most of the environment with default settings. There were still a couple of items we needed to configure. We had to select the guest operating system, presumably this assists the software in deciding relevant default settings; we chose Windows 2000 Server at this point. Next the type of network connection: Bridged (with the guest machine's own external IP address), NAT (using the host's IP address), Host Only (private virtual network on the host), or no network at all.
The final option was the virtual hard disk size. The default is 4GB, but this can increased or decreased. VMware's virtual disks are created as files on the host operating system. As a result, you can allocate a maximum drive size and VMware can be set to create virtual disk files of 2GB each as needed, but this slows down performance.
We did a quick check of the Windows 2000 Server guest's Device Manager to see how it compared with the host, and found quite a few of the drivers were VMware virtual drivers and that there did not appear to be any support for the host's USB ports.
The second VM was setup as a custom VM for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of additional items to configure under the custom option. You can define what happens to the VM when the host starts up or shuts down, what type of hard drive (IDE or SCSI), the SCSI controller (Buslogic or LSI Logic), the Virtual Device node for the SCSI device, and whether the virtual drive is persistent or non-persistent. And, should you wish, an existing virtual disk image can be reused rather than creating a new one, or the VM can be tied directly to a physical hard drive.
Installing the guest OS is a doddle and is made easier because the formatting of the virtual hard disk is very swift indeed.
Once the guest VMs are installed, they can be controlled by a simple row of buttons on the VM windows toolbar. There are four buttons that look much like the controls and a CD player and their VM functions are Stop, Suspend, Start, and Reset. To have the keyboard and mouse focus shift to the VM from the host display you simply click in the VM window. To return focus to the host, press CTRL-ALT. The menus at the top of the VM session window address the configuration and control of the session from the perspective of the host or the VM in question. Host settings include the maximum memory pool for VMs and the virtual network settings, which has an extensive range of configuration options. The behaviour of VMs under host power on/off conditions can also be reconfigured here along with hot key definitions, mouse, and keyboard behaviour.
The memory of the VM can be tweaked using a slide control which also displays recommended minimum, preferred, and maximum settings. While the CPU resource allocation cannot be tweaked directly from GSX Server, third-party resource management tools can be used. And, if finer control of say network bandwidth or disk I/O bandwidth is required, then VMware's next model up, ESX Server, is worth a look.
Another advantage of ESX Server is that VMs can be migrated from one physical host to another while still live, a very neat trick that VMware has dubbed Vmotion. GSX servers, and Microsoft Virtual Servers, must be powered down first before they can moved to another physical server.
A supremely useful button in the toolbar is the VM snapshot button. This can take an instant snapshot of the VM state. Should the system crash during software development, for example, it is a simple matter to reload the snapshot and resume before the problem occurred.
Performance was quite good, although the mouse and graphics were a tad clunky until the VMware Tools were installed in the VM session. The installation of the tools loaded faster graphics and mouse drivers and both were more than acceptable. Of course, disk performance is quite important and to this end our test of disk performance (see page 86) was quite informative. We were very pleasantly surprised when the disk performance of the VM ranged from a very impressive 97 percent to a still respectable 84 percent of the host server's disk performance.
VMware has its own dedicated administrative tool called VirtualCenter (VC), which is quite a powerful and easy-to-use tool. There is very little that VC cannot do once you have installed the host software and VC agent on your remote servers. VC organises the host servers into server farms and can, through its agent, control and configure the servers remotely.
For example, through VC you can create and configure VMs on a remote server, load the VMware Tool kit on the newly created VM, take snapshots, power the VM up or down, put the VM into standby state, and clone the VM. Cloned VM templates are stored in a template repository, and VC manages the server farms by storing management data in an Access database.
VC utilises Windows Active Directory for authentication and to delegate user and group permissions; in effect the VMs are treated as though they were physical machines.
While it is neat to be able to clone an existing VM for deployment elsewhere, it would be a bit of a bother if you could not customise the cloned VM during deployment. At the very least, you'd want to adjust basic settings like machine names, IP addresses, and the like. Windows VM clones can be customised using Microsoft's SysPrep, while VC supports the customisation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3.0, Advanced Server 2.1, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.
From VC, it is a simple matter to check on the health and performance of remote hosts and VMs. Of course if there is a problem, the remote system can be tweaked by taking control from the VC using Remote Console.
There are a wide range of alarms and events, these can also be modified by the administrator or new alerts can be created to monitor specific parameters of interest on the VM in question. Should an alert be generated, VC can be configured to use email messaging via SMTP to notify the administrator.
Product
Vmware GSX Virtual Server 3
Price
US$2500 for two-CPU host; VirtualCenter Management Server
US$5000; VirtualCenter Agent US$300 per Host managed CPU
Vendor
VMware
E-mail
apacsales@vmware.com
Web
www.vmware.com
Interoperability
Supports a wide range of host OSes and an ever wider range
of client OSes.
Futureproofing
½
Excellent management tools and VMs can be managed by third-party
software that sees the VM as a physical machine.
ROI
GSX Server is moderately priced, but in a small installation
the management software would seem expensive.
Service
½
Purchase of 12-month Gold support and subscription services
required with GSX Server licenses
Rating
½
6%
1%
Your excellent web article refers to your test results which i can't find a link to anywhere in the article.
As the test results are referenced as being "on on page 86, I guess this is an oversight.
Could you provide the URL to the test results?
Many thanks,
Ravi cabral