VMware Server was our topic this week, with product manager Azmir Mohamed as our guest. One of the most fun parts of these podcasts is that they are decidedly not our standard webinars/webcasts. I come up with the guests, but the agenda is set by both our Roundtable Panel and now increasingly by the live listeners who show up every week to listen, chat, and call in. As always, listen via the widget on the right or the mp3 (56:01 duration). More info on the podcasts. We are on iTunes.
If you want more of an introduction to VMware Server, please register for this VMware Server webcast. And although we did cover the topic, you can also check out this slightly cheesy but informative VMware Server vs ESXi podcast with Azmir and Amir.
Check out the VMware Server FAQ page, but the PDF version of the VMware Server FAQ is a bit longer and more complete.
This week we succeeded in generating more heat than light a few times, but here are a few things I learned this week about VMware Server: You can manage Server v1.x with VirtualCenter, but we don’t yet have that capability to do that in version 2.x. The reason is that, frankly, not many people were using that feature (you have to buy a VC Agent license to do it, so we know exactly how many people are taking advantage of it), so even though we demoed an early version of the feature for 2.0, we felt like there were higher priority features we should be working on. Here are some of the new features in 2.0:
- New expanded operating system support
- 64-bit operating system support
- VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access management interface
- Independent virtual machine console
- More scalable virtual machines
- Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
- Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI)
- Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI)
- Support for VIX API 1.6
So, if you need to manage Server via VC, please continue to use Server 1.x, which is far from a first gen product with its roots in GSX Server. If you feel strongly about this or any other topic, make yourself heard over at the VMware Server Community.
Another thing that I learned is that we’re running as native 64-bit on Linux.
Best tip from the show: keep a backup copy of your VC Management Server in a VM on VMware Server on a spare machine somewhere in case of emergency.
Join us next Wednesday @ noon Pacific Standard Time with EMC’s Chad Sakac. (This week all our European friends were missing because they switched from Daylight Saving last week and showed up an hour late! We here in the US do it this Sunday, so we’re back in sync.)
