VMWare

[WeirdEars]

So, what do you use VMWare/VPC for?

[markajm]

testing new software before installing on production machines..

and the 1000's (well.. it feels like thousands now) of unattended xp cd builds.

[Zxian]

Anything and everything (I put other).

[CoffeeFiend]

This poll is like "What do you use Microsoft for?". VMWare is a company, not a specific piece of software. They have several different apps: the free player, their workstation product, their new and free server product (used to be called GSX), and finally ESX (plus a bunch of extra tools like P2V).

And the choices are OS'es instead of actual uses. (So the question is seemingly more along the lines of "what OS you run in VMWare workstation" - and you pick only one single OS as an answer! (I doubt you'll get meaningful answers out of the poll results)

If the question is really meant to be "What do you use VMWare workstation for?", then my answer's "nothing". I have no use for it.

Although I do use their new free server app everyday for what would fit under "other". It's used for testing networked apps, temporary testing servers (if I want to test some app against say, a PostgreSQL DB running on Linux, I'm not buying a PC for that which will get used twice a year - you just create a VM instead and fire it up as req'd), I use it for testing app deployments and installs (on clean installs of OS'es and different/older OS'es), management scripts (ran against networked PCs), testing various *nix stuff (I might eventually build a dedicated *nix box, but I already have too many PC stuff laying around, and that's one more PC to update and maintain) - there's lots of good and free appliances you can get from their website (some of which are very good/nice), etc.

Virtualization has tons of uses.

[LLXX]

Anything that I want to test without messing up my main OS.

[Takeshi]

So, what do you use VMWare/VPC for?

So VPC users should vote too?

And why omit Win2k Server, Win Server 2003?

Why lump Win2k/XP together?

[DigeratiPrime]

almost everything

[prx984]

i just test various peice of software under various OS's. im usually testing a copy of my nLited copy of XP or 2000. rarely do i run a single copy of windows in it, theres always a vpc being made

[Jeremy]

To test nLite ISOs or to test a certain program, record screenshots, etc.

[newsposter]

I don't that that VMWare officially supports anything older than NT4 and even that is even money on whether or not it will work reliably.

Silly poll.......

[jftuga]

I replaced 2 old Dell servers (out of warrenty) with 2 VMWare Server guest instances. It works great. Both guests run Win 2003 EE and one of them even runs SQL 2005.

-John

[CoffeeFiend]

I replaced 2 old Dell servers (out of warrenty) with 2 VMWare Server guest instances. It works great. Both guests run Win 2003 EE and one of them even runs SQL 2005.

Yes, VMWare Server (or even better - ESX if you can afford it) truly rocks for server consolidation! While GUIs inside VMWare aren't quite as responsive than a native OS install (no hardware acceleration for one thing), for server purposes/processes it's not all that bad. I run several such things inside VMs (pgsql/db2/oracle/mysql/fbird mainly for testing and porting apps, low-overhead lamp stack, iis and mssql 2k & 2005 on win2k3 for testing deployments and upgrades, same for AD and network stuff, etc) and it's performing quite well. I expected pretty high latencies and such, but it's nearly as fast. The big advantage being I can fire up what's needed only when required (or leave some running). No need to have tons of testing boxes - just one box with enough RAM and HD space for images (and CPU depending on load).

[jondercik]

ESX for datacenter consolidation. It is a kick a** product when used in conjunction with SAN technology. You can drastically improve system uptime and reduce system rollout time to minutes instead of hours.

[MagicAndre1981]

I use it for testing my nLite-ISO.

[thomasd]

I use it for testing applications, Citrix, AD stuff, Nlite installations.