Run a Linux server farm for nix

David M Williams
Monday, 06 August 2007 11:54

Business IT - Open Source

VMWare

By contrast, VMWare does everything Virtual PC does and handles X-Windows flawlessly. The display issues of Virtual PC are non-existent with VMWare – and versions are available for Linux as well as Windows. Really, if you use Linux or want to use Linux there’s only one choice.

Additionally, VMWare runs multiple virtual machines in a tabbed environment rather than separate windows. Although largely a matter of preference, this can make management easier. Hard drives are still disk-based file, with the extension .vmdk.

The catch with VMWare is that its free player won’t let you create new virtual machines; you need to have someone else make the system for you. You can then freely use it and modify it with the player, you just can’t make a brand new one from scratch. The mid-range VMWare Workstation can create new virtual machines but it is a commercial product. Fortunately, there are free third-party tools to help here. One is VMX Builder and IronGeek have a video tutorial showing how to use it.

Curiously though, the VMWare Server is also free. Like Virtual Server, you can start up your virtual machines automatically on system boot. You can also make new virtual computers, so it makes a better choice than the Player. You’ll need to register to get a serial key to use it but this is a painless process and costs no money.

Irrespective, here’s the great thing: VMWare has a great user fan base and it is much easier to find Linux-based VMDKs. One especially brilliant site is TuxDistro. This is a legal BitTorrent site which does nothing besides distribute Linux distros – as ISO images and as compressed VMDX files. You can find perennial favourites like Ubuntu and Knoppix here but also specially customised systems like 64 Studio – a Debian remix tailor made for digital content creation. In fact, this adds another compelling reason in support of virtual machines: it’s much easier for someone to set up a base Linux installation then tweak it to suit their needs then distribute it to friends and family if it is a virtual hard disk than it is to make a Live CD distro.

XenSource

Perhaps lesser known that the other two is XenSource. It comes in three flavours with its low-end XenServer Express edition being free. The sole limitations of this version are that it only permits up to four virtual machines per server, and that the administrator can only manage one virtual machine at a time. Apart from this, it too is a better choice for Linux users than Microsoft's offering because it will run on Linux operating systems and it will display X-Windows fine.

One especially nice thing about XenSource is that it is open source and that it also contributes back to Linux. Recently, patches by XenSource were included by Linux directly into the Linux kernel and this commitment to the community deserves to be well-regarded.

I urge you to try out virtualisation; it really is a brilliant, simple, elegant and effortless way to evaluate distros side-by-side and to manage a genuine server farm for just the price of one single hardware setup.