VMWare ESXi question

[VJ]

Hello,

Perhaps a weird question, but it is possible to install VMWare ESXi on a computer and work on a virtual machine on that same computer? I am guessing it only allows remote connections...
Are there products that allow an OS-less virutalization, and work on the same computer?

Thanks,


Jörg

[MultimediaMan]

VMware ESX and ESXi can only be used using Remote connections. ESXi is an extremely low level hypervisor, and very barebones.

For an application-layer Hypervisor look at VMware workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server, VirtualBox and a host of others.

I just passed my VCP410

[UtwigMU]

Also depends what are you trying to achieve - if you would like to have great desktop experience then something like VMware workstation is best as it allows 3D acceleration, unity mode (you can alt+tab to guest apps in windows).

[VJ]

It was just for a home system, using a freenas for storage server, while being independent of the other OS on the machine. For sure I could run the freenas inside the other OS, but it then is as stable as the host system.

[UtwigMU]

I am researching this and options are:

Linux, virtualbox for a headless server
Windows file server + vmware workstation/virtualbox/vmware player for other small guests (not the most practical)
Windows HyperV fileserver + virtualized guests (note that Debian has issues with HyperV)
ZFS NAS (or some other type of NAS) which exports drives as iSCSI to ESXi Server which runs your servers. Here both boxes need to be on UPS as if power goes out during write process hell may break loose.

[MultimediaMan]

Hyper-V doesn't appear to have issues with Debian which would be of a major consequence: http://wiki.debian.org/WindowsServerHyperV

With Hyper-V, all of your disks can be stored locally or remotely in the form of VHDs.

iSCSI targets are becoming more and more plentiful: one of the betters one out there is Microsoft's Storage Server 2008 R2: the iSCSI Target can present VHDs as iSCSI Targets. OpenSUSE has a very nice iSCSI Target as well (and has excellent hardware support).

My personal VMware/Hyper-V lab has three Hosts* booting from a single Storage Server 2008 iSCSI box using gPXE/sanboot.c32.

* Hosts: 3x Intel DQ35JO motherboard, Skt 775 C2Quads, 8GB RAM, 3x PCI-e GbE Adapters, no local storage.