VMware GSX Server 2.5

Virtual machine (VM) software has earned a place in the development and test beds of many organizations because of the ease with which it lets you create multiple test environments without having to set up different physical systems for each environment. The improvements that VMware has made to the latest versions of its VMware GSX Server show that VM solutions can effectively test production-level server consolidation. VMware designed VMware GSX Server 2.5 for enterprises that want to consolidate multiple virtual servers on one high-end Intel-based system. VMware GSX Server supports as many as 64 VMs running on systems with as many as 32 processors and 64GB of RAM.

You install VMware GSX Server after installing the base OS. The product works by implementing a software layer called the VM that emulates the hardware. You then install an OS known as a guest on each VM. Guest OSs can run concurrently, as if each were running on separate systems. Each VM has its own virtual hardware, including a processor, a hard disk, memory, and network devices. VMware GSX Server handles the task of "virtualizing" the real hardware and sharing it with all running VMs, and can also use a virtual network to connect the VMs—a feature that gives all the VMs access to your network resources.

VMware GSX Server requires a minimum of 256MB of RAM, plus enough additional RAM to run each guest OS. The product supports a maximum of 64GB of RAM running on Windows-based hosts. VMware GSX Server requires 275MB of hard disk space for the VM server, the VMware Management Interface, the VMPerl API, and the VMware Remote Console. In addition, VMware recommends that you maintain 1GB of hard disk space for each VM you install.

You can install VMware GSX Server on host systems running Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition, Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2003 Standard Edition, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server (Win2K AS), Win2K Server, and Windows NT Server 4.0. For guest OSs, VMware GSX Server supports most Microsoft Windows desktop and server OSs, several Linux distributions, and even Novell NetWare. Because each OS runs independently, you need separate licenses for each guest OS. Table 1 lists all the guest OSs that VMware GSX Server 2.5 supports.

VMware provides a virtual system platform for each VM. The VM thinks it's running on a one-processor system with an Intel 440BX motherboard using the NS338 SIO chipset and Phoenix BIOS 4.0 release 6.0. Depending on the system's capacity, you can allocate up to 2GB of RAM per VM. Each VM sees an SVGA graphics card, can have as many as four IDE drives of 128GB, as many as 14 SCSI devices on two virtual SCSI controllers, as many as two 3.5" disk drives, four serial ports, two parallel ports, two 1.1 USB ports, three virtual Ethernet cards, and a virtual mouse and keyboard.

Virtually Up and Running
I installed VMware GSX Server on a dual-processor Hewlett-Packard HP NetServer system with 1GB of RAM. The product's CD-ROM doesn't include an autorun file, but the VMware GSX Server installation was easy nevertheless. I simply navigated to the CD-ROM's Windows directory and ran the vmware-gsx-server-installer-2.5.0-3986.exe program. After I entered the 25-digit serial number and read the installation screens, I had VMware GSX Server running within a few minutes. The only notable occurrence was that the setup program informed me it was turning off the system's CD-ROM autoplay feature to prevent possible hardware conflicts.

After I installed the product, I was ready to create a VM. VMware GSX Server asks you what guest OS you intend to run on the VM, then prompts you to name it and, optionally, allocate a custom amount of memory to it. Figure 1 shows the New Virtual Machine Wizard that you use to create a new VM.

When you select the Virtual Disk option, VMware GSX Server creates each VM in an isolated data file with a .vmdk extension. This feature lets you save virtual disk files to tape or disk to archive VMs or easily move files among VMware servers. You also have the option to create the virtual disks as persistent, nonpersistent, and undoable disks. The persistent option lets the virtual disk behave as if it were a standard disk. When you select this option, the system preserves all modifications you make to the disk when you stop and restart the VM. The nonpersistent option directs the system to discard any changes you make to the VM when you power it off, which can be handy when you want to ensure that you always start with the system in a known state. The undoable mode lets you choose to keep or discard system-state changes when you turn off a VM.

After creating a VM, I used the VMware GSX Server console to power on the VM. The server then opened a window on the host server that prompted me to install the guest OS. I inserted the Windows 2003 CD-ROM, and the standard Windows installation process began and progressed as if I were installing the software on a standalone system. I restarted the VM after the installation finished, and the guest OS was up and running.

   Previous  [1]  2  Next