Re: vmware on linux

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 09:43:34 +0000, J. Clarke wrote:

dogdog@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I posted this same question to vmware.for-linux.general but havent
received any responses. Figured I'd try it here.

sooooo....

Can I install a vmware product on a server and share it out via
nfs for other users to use? I was thinking of one iteration of
vmware running Win2K Server to handle all my windows programs,
and then the users can activate it and just logon to the server.

This is what it would look like

Server
vmware nfs share
|------------client1
------------client2
------------client3 etc etc...
create a menu item on client to click on and activate vmware. This
opens the vmware virtual machine holding win2k server or
other winOS. The user then logs onto the win environment
to run apps. This would have one build of vmware on my main
server and then I would only need to build the hosted OS
once holding windows apps.

Is this possible? If so what vmware product would I need?

If not possible I'd like to hear how other people are using vmware in
their organizations to provide access to windows based programs
in a linux office. I know wine exists but it is not fully functioning
with some of the win apps I have.

I'm not really clear on what you're trying to accomplish.

If you have a license for 2K Server the _easy_ way to do what you seem to be
trying to do is just install it on a machine somewhere, set up Terminal
Services, and access it via rdesktop. If your Linux host has significant
reserve capacity you could install in a virtual machine instead and do the
same thing.

Terminal server is ok but I really dont want to go down that route.
While easy to implement I would think its not as seemless, however I
could easily code something to make it unknown to the user whats
really going on.

It looks like what you're proposing to do is set up a virtual machine and
have multiple users access that single virtual machine by loading the image
file across the network. Read up on cloning in the vmware docs if you want
to do that, you have two options and the differences are more than I have
time to get into right now.

I'll read up on this. Thanks for mentioning.

While this can be done, I'd recommend against it unless you're running a
seriously high end host and infrastructure, as to get reasonable
performance you're going to have to be pumping enough data across the wire
both ways to give a reasonable approximation of the performance of a local
drive.

Further, running multiple virtual copies of Server 2K is going to unless you
have a license for each session be a violation of your Microsoft license,
and with Server the dollar value involved can be high enough to make it
worth their while to come after you if somebody (i.e. the bum you fired
last week with good cause) decides to blow the whistle.

I was thinking of one virtual copy, but I think I need to run this
vmware to see how it actually works. I bet that will clear up
alot of what i'm asking. Thanks for the information.



TIA
derdogdog

.

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