VMware ESXi and/or Virtualizing an X61

[kennyschiff]

After my disaster with shattering my LCD, I am very sensitive to being dependent on hardware. You work so hard getting your machine properly set up for the way you work, and the whole thing can be toast pretty quickly. My machine is imaged and the data regularly backed up, but had I had reason to switch hardware for any reason, I'd most likely have to go through the process of reinstalling. Right now I'm on XP, so that adds its own headaches into the mix. I've been playing around with virtualizing, and wonder whether anyone here has gone down the route of use ESXi, or completely given their X61 (or other TP) over to a complete virtualized environment. I'm also considering a potential migration path to Ubuntu, but want the safety of going back to XP has needed.

I've already done an experiment to convert my XP install to a VMWare machine that I've succesfully played back from inside Windows.

Comments on VMWare, especially in regard to using it for launch of a primary environment on a TP are appreciated.

[sportfreak]

actually few days ago one of my grad prof told us to try xen VMware as a class mid term project

and i guess having 2 GB ram on x61 w/ T8100 is not sufficient for VM's
will definitely give it a shot on the weekend!!

[aceo07]

actually few days ago one of my grad prof told us to try xen VMware as a class mid term project

and i guess having 2 GB ram on x61 w/ T8100 is not sufficient for VM's
will definitely give it a shot on the weekend!!

'xen VMware'? You mean running xen server, then running Windows/Linux with VMware running on it? I've considered that before. We use xen server on a couple of development servers at work. I use VMware for my development testing. I've been tempted to plop VMware player on top of a virtual machine running under xen.

[aceo07]

After my disaster with shattering my LCD, I am very sensitive to being dependent on hardware. You work so hard getting your machine properly set up for the way you work, and the whole thing can be toast pretty quickly. My machine is imaged and the data regularly backed up, but had I had reason to switch hardware for any reason, I'd most likely have to go through the process of reinstalling. Right now I'm on XP, so that adds its own headaches into the mix. I've been playing around with virtualizing, and wonder whether anyone here has gone down the route of use ESXi, or completely given their X61 (or other TP) over to a complete virtualized environment. I'm also considering a potential migration path to Ubuntu, but want the safety of going back to XP has needed.

I've already done an experiment to convert my XP install to a VMWare machine that I've succesfully played back from inside Windows.

Comments on VMWare, especially in regard to using it for launch of a primary environment on a TP are appreciated.

I know that VMware and other VM software does not really support the trackpoint scrolling. This is a big negative for me since I love that feature and most of my laptops are the X-series.

I have tried VMware at work for my development environment and it was nice to be able to transport my virtual machine back home to continue work.

Regarding Ubuntu, with Ubuntu 8.10, it's very easy to install Ubuntu without going through the hassle of creating a separate partition and manually setting up for dual boot. It can be installed from Windows and run the entire operating system off a big file. Easy to install and easy to remove if you don't like it. You just go to Windows Control Panel and remove software Ubuntu. After installing, it gives you options to boot into Window or Ubuntu. I would recommend this if you want to try Ubuntu and worry about losing Windows.

[carbon_unit]

ESXi will not work well for you on a Thinkpad. It is intended for a server application. You cannot even get a display on the local machine. You have to use another Windows machine to access the VM's on the ESXi server.

[heelix]

I am a very heavy VMWare workstation user - I have images for each of my customer specific configurations, and will spool up a server that I code against. I also have a 'pre-baked' development environment that I can operate in. I'll run a very light Linux host OS and run the work environment inside the guest OS (sometimes Windows, others Linux). When home from the field, I can then spin up that same image on a more powerful box.

Tis one of the primary reasons I bumped my x61s to 8G of RAM... However, it can be done with 2G. Well worth your time to pop in 2x2G even if you only have a 32-bit OS (and thus have access to 3G max).

Physical RAM is key. Add up what your host OS needs with the guest OS, and make darn sure that you have enough physical RAM to cover that. Tis a good idea to turn off unneeded services, etc anyhow. I'll start with the router/basic install, and trim services from there. You can have a VM with little RAM. Got several with 640M that I'll use as daily drivers.

A fast, large HDD helps here too.

(Granted, Workstation is not the same as Xen or ESX, but...)

There are some free as in beer options out there too.