Which virtual Machine is better?

[hons]

Hi friends,

I want to see which virtual machines you're using.

VM Workstation

VM Server

MS Virtual PC

MS Virtual Server

Could somebody give some opinions???

[phkninja]

I use Virtual PC and Virtual Box

Virtuial PC works fine but can be a bit slow on lading the information etc.

Virtual Box works faster, but i still havent gotten drag&drop to work or been able to connect a usb device to it.

Both have their benefits, but it also helps to run an isop etc in 2 virtual machines to check it.

I have used qemu befoe as well and found its ok (its used by the guys in Winbuilder for testing their Win Live/ Win PE disks)

[jcarle]

VMWare Workstation.

[Jeremy]

VMware Workstation.

If I could network as easily with VirtualBox as I could with VMware, things would be different.

[[deXter]]

I found VirtualBox to be slightly faster than VMware, but I uninstalled it as I couldn't get drag-n-drop, shared folders, networking, etc to work.

Microsoft Virtual PC is horribly slow and lacks important features.

As for VMware Workstation vs VMware Server, if you're on a home PC/workstation, you should run the Workstation version.

QEMU is probably the fastest of the lot, but its simplicity and lack of features makes it better suited to quickly test bootable images.

[Zxian]

Dexter pretty much sums it up for me. In the end, VMware Workstation is what I use.

[zakum]

VMare Workstation, excellent bit of kit

[sylvianorth]

I've never really used anything but Virtual Pc, but having read the support for VMare it might be time for a change.

[deXter] - What are the features that Virtual Pc lacks?

[[deXter]]

I've never really used anything but Virtual Pc, but having read the support for VMare it might be time for a change.

[deXter] - What are the features that Virtual Pc lacks?

There are plenty of them! Where do I begin?

- Performance isn't up to par with VirtualBox or VMware. Quite slow for regular/heavy usage.

- No facility to import from other Virtual Machines like VMware (although VMware supports importing from VPC.)

- Not much flexibility in customizing virtual hardware

- Cannot create SnapShots. Undo disks are OK, but they don't provide the kind of flexibility that snapshots do. In VMware for example, I can jump to any snapshot I want to, to test software with different configurations, in the same virtual machine.

- Lack of 3D acceleration. VMware supports DirectX and can play simple Dx games like Age of Empires.

- Better support for other OSes like *nix.

- Clones and Teams

These are just a few of the differences I can think of right now.

Edited May 1, 2007 by [deXter]

[JohnS]

I am with sylvianorth.

But I see a big difference between MS Virtual PC and VMware Workstation:

The first one is free and the second is not .

[jondercik]

You get what you pay for. But currently you can download the beta of VMware workstation for free. It is pretty stable.

Jim

[Tomcat76]

I use MS Virtual PC 2004.

By contrast with other experiences, I find VMWare to be obnoxiously slow. Windows XP installs in roughly 25min on VPC whereas it needs over an hour and a half on VMWare. I have reinstalled VMWare a few times, tried different configurations, partition sizes, but nothing helped; starting up Windows takes more than 5min and even the BIOS section is horribly slow. MS VPC is great for me and I don't need the "missing features" others have named above.

Host: Win2K Pro SP4 / Athlon64 X2-4800.

Edited May 1, 2007 by Tomcat76

[spacesurfer]

Been using VPC 2007, cause it's FREE.

It BSOD'd on both XP and Vista once in a while. Couldn't find out what triggered the BSOD. Maybe my memory cause I was using 1x512mb + 1x1Gb?

Upgraded to 2 Gb (2x1Gb) and no more BSOD. (I did get a BSOD once but VPC wasn't running. Funny thing was my laptop also BSOD at the same time and I got a similar crash message. That was the weirdest thing I've seen.)

Anyway, I installed Vlited Vista and it was slow, even though I gave it 1 Gb virtual memory, leaving 1 Gb for my physical system.

Then, I accidentally started Vista from a Grub4Dos menu when I was trying to load XP which had only 450 mb memory allocated and it was fast!!! Go figure.

Now, I set vista to use 575 mb and it's fast. It needed less memory, not more to run.

[[deXter]]

Been using VPC 2007, cause it's FREE.

It BSOD'd on both XP and Vista once in a while. Couldn't find out what triggered the BSOD. Maybe my memory cause I was using 1x512mb + 1x1Gb?

Upgraded to 2 Gb (2x1Gb) and no more BSOD. (I did get a BSOD once but VPC wasn't running. Funny thing was my laptop also BSOD at the same time and I got a similar crash message. That was the weirdest thing I've seen.)

Anyway, I installed Vlited Vista and it was slow, even though I gave it 1 Gb virtual memory, leaving 1 Gb for my physical system.

Then, I accidentally started Vista from a Grub4Dos menu when I was trying to load XP which had only 450 mb memory allocated and it was fast!!! Go figure.

Now, I set vista to use 575 mb and it's fast. It needed less memory, not more to run.

Why don't you try VirtualBox? It's free, open source, has more features and is much faster than VPC!

Edited June 8, 2007 by [deXter]

[danw]

Why don't you try VirtualBox? It's free, open source, has more features and is much faster than VPC!

Works really bad... Not only my opinion...

Best software products for virtualization I ever used are one from VMWare.

- WMWare Workstation - the best choice;

- VMWare Player - free.

If you thinking not possible to config the VM on VMWare Player - you are wrong: there are many tools to manage virtual disks for VMWare. Some allows even VM config edition (like MakeVM: ask google).

If you thinkig about guest OS 'tools' - you know where you can get them