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VMware Releases Open Source Virtualization Client
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Feb 04, 2009 08:02 AM
from the not-before-time dept.
from the not-before-time dept.
ruphus13 writes in with the news that VMware has finally decided to open-source its client for virtual desktops, releasing it under the LGPL. This was in response to intense pressure from the growing number of Linux distros that include virtualization by default. From the post: "The CEO replacement who entered VMware last year was Paul Maritz, a long-time Microsoft executive with intimate familiarity with how Windows swallowed up entire categories of utility software as it grew up by simply wrapping free utilities into the operating system. Paul knows about that, and he had to have seen last year the dual threats to VMware of open source virtualization offerings and virtualization on board in operating systems. The VMware View Open Client allows businesses to host virtualized desktops in the data center, and users can access their desktops from any device. Going with an open source solution like this was VMware's only choice, especially as Microsoft includes Hyper-V virtualization in Windows Server. I'm sure Maritz was very focused on the Microsoft threat, because he used to be behind similar threats. VMware can grab market share with this move, stave off Microsoft's dominance, and offer support and services around its open source offering.'"
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Thanks... (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks, but I'm more than happy with VirtualBox, either open or closed source. Much faster & easier to install on my ubuntu boxes!
Re:Thanks... (Score:5, Informative)
VirtualBox and its ilk are competitors to VMware Workstation. When it comes to the datacenter, nothing comes close to their enterprise offerings.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes. While Xen is not as easy to deploy as ESX Sever, it performs quite a bit better in my testing. I think this is because Xen is paravirtualization, so it saves overhead by using the drivers from the host's Linux kernel, plus it has a very small footprint.
If you need cross-platform clustered filesystems, you might be better off with ESX as Xen doesn't include any, but you could always use a third-party solution. I haven't compared peformance on clustered filesystems, but I'll bet ESX's is a bit better i
Re:Thanks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Both are quite easy to deploy and Xen performs faster than ESX, but I never want to even think about running non-clustered virtualization solution. In this aspect does Vmware come in front.
I don't know. I had less trouble deploying ESX than Xen, but it might've been that I was using a somewhat pre-configured/tuned install image of ESX created by the company's operating systems group.
Anyway, Novell sells official support for Xen via SLES and their subscription policy is that one SLES subscription covers all the VMs on the same machine. Hence, the Novell solution was cheaper.
In the end they stayed with ESX, mostly because the CIO was getting kickbacks from VMware.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but I never want to even think about running non-clustered virtualization solution.
On a Xen or KVM solution you simply use the distribution's clustering software. Moving VM's is much simpler than most HA clustered applications usually run by such software.
We'll be using the integrated Xen on RHEL5 for most linux virtualization needs, the price of ESX is one part, performance is another large part, and then add the lack of a linux VIC client, various driver issues yet another. And yes, that's in a datacenter
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having done enterprise installations of both (pre-Citrix), vmware took the cake.
The problem with Xen was the problem with a lot of open source "products". They may be superior in terms of resources or technology but they aren't "enterprise-ready".
You can argue all you want about "hiring someone to hack on it" or "developing support tools internally" but those honestly don't fly except at a very specific company size. There are certain features and expectations that someone has when using something as core t
Re:Thanks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Xen as Novell ships in SUSE 10.1/10.2 is dramatically better, if bereft of tools. xVM is also very good, but suffers the same problem. Adding value is the name of the game, and Maritz fights more than the lackluster implementations of Hyper-V. Ask Microsoft for their Windows 2008 sales numbers and watch them distract you from the question. It's selling like Vista, although it's not bad-- just difficult to value-justify upgrading to.
xVM on the desktop or server is nice... but lacks compatibility that ESX and Xen-alikes are pounding them with. Xen has improved dramatically, even from versions of six months ago. Citrix/XenServer is decent, but the SLES 10.2 version is ready to rock.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
unfortunately it is still rather buggy, tho since its open source it might get these issues fixed sooner or later
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that it needs a lot of work, but it's also improving at a pretty decent clip. I tried it when I ran Ubuntu 8.04, and had a nightmare with the networking. By Ubuntu 8.10, the included version made networking a snap, making it easy to use host networking to simulate a device on my network.
Another roadblock that was fixed in those 6-months; the older version couldn't boot Ubuntu Server (I believe it was a matter of VirtualBox not supporting PXE), while the newer version can.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Somewhat. I find that in 2.x on a Linux host with an XP guest, sometimes the VM gets stuck and hangs, making you have to kill it. If this happens, not all of the memory allocated to the VM will get reclaimed, which is highly annoying.
Only seems to happen, for me anyway, with XP guests. Linux guests and Win2K guests don't seem to have this problem.
Re:Thanks... (Score:5, Informative)
this is no VirtualBox competitor, it's a whole different product. it's the client for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
Parent
Re:Thanks... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about VMWare Player? (Score:5, Insightful)
A popular way of distributing software - especially for people to try it out - is as a complete Linux distribution disk image that you can run with the VMWare Player. Is that program also going to become free? (If not, I guess it should be replaced with VirtualBox, but VirtualBox doesn't seem quite as polished.)
As far as I can tell this is just a client application connecting to the VMWare View server, which is some kind of Citrix-like remote desktop server and remains proprietary. So no big deal, it appears.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about VMWare Player? (Score:4, Informative)
Not only that, but VMWare Server (which uses the same "format" of vm) is also free. Their recent move to web-only admin tools has gotten annoying, but overall it's still very nice and lets you manage things much more in depth than VMWare Player does.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As of the latest version, VMWare Server still (quietly) comes with the Virtual Infrastructure Client.
For windows installs, it's here:
C:\program files\VMware\VMware Server\hostd\docroot\client\VMware-viclient.exe
In the field "IP Address/Name", use https://name/ [name] or IP%:8333
You need the VMware authorization and VMware Host Agent service running, but can disable the VMware Server Web Access service if you don't use the web interface.
I do wish they would update the viclient to use later hardware versions. As is
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I should have used preview
https//NAMEORIP:8333
insert the : after https
The perceived value of high prices (Score:5, Insightful)
VMWare's Workstation and advanced server products are expensive and companies have been buying them for quite some time as part of their infrastructure. Asking these customers to believe that "free" stuff is greater-than-or-equal-to what they have been spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on is like asking Christians to consider the notion that there is no god. They simply can't go there mentally.
There is value perceived in spending lots of money on something. Take diamonds for example. They are NOT by any means "rare." Their beauty is debatable. But people perceive their artificially high prices as value even when faced with the fact that diamond "resale value" is nearly nothing by comparison. Some people think spending more money on things make them more worth while, more valuable, more elite. Starbucks built a nationwide chain on the idea. Clothing stores have been exploiting this perception for more than 100 years in the U.S.
And then there are the commercial software vendors...
Re:The perceived value of high prices (Score:5, Insightful)
You discount the fact that really big implementations nearly require VMware to work by simple virtue of the maturity of the product. By really big, I mean 1000 to 3000 guest servers and 10's of thousands of desktops. You think enterprise managers are going to go with Xen or Virtual box in these scenarios? Not a freaking chance. The marginal cost of the software is a pittance compared to the losses incurred when the project fails or even worse, when it sputters for a long time and then dies.
Here are some numbers.
VMware enterprise licensing and support= 2 mil.
Server hardware, infrastructure and storage= 4 mil
Professional services = 2 mil.
Overall savings to organization in in heating cooling, data center, backups, personnel and equipment refresh over 5 years= 10 mil.
Savings doing it with some other software= 500 grand (no one cares).
Failed project = -16 mil.
Comparing VMware to Starbucks as a luxury boutique product is nonsense. It is the only one that can and has actually delivered an enterprise capability.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now how about an ESX Client? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, now let's have a GUI for Virtualcenter/ESX that doesn't require Windows.
Re:Now how about an ESX Client? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Even a web client. How hard is that, VMware?
What company builds their product on top of Linux and then builds a GUI client that only runs on Winders?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What company builds their product on top of Linux and then builds a GUI client that only runs on Winders?
Citrix.
Too late (Score:3, Informative)
I jumped ship to VirtualBox at the end of last year after being a long time VMWare Server user.
Server's switch to a terrible UI on version 2.0 and the fact that they continue to charge for VMWare fusion made me look for alternatives.
VMWare still has the best enterprise virtualization management products though in the meantime so I'm not terribly worried about them making a vanishing act.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
VMware basically ruined whatever marketing value the zero cost VMware Server gambit provided. For those who aren't familiar with the drama:
VMware Server 1.x contains a straightforward native client that works efficiently as a console for virtual machines. It's the same basic client VMware has used for the last decade or so across the produce line. It isn't perfect, but it is very usable, stable, etc.
With the 2.x release they eliminated this client and replaced it with an enormous Tomcat+Java+Browser plug
The clients free, but the server co$t$ (Score:2, Informative)
VMware View Open Client lets you connect from a Linux desktop to remote Windows desktops managed by VMware View.
http://store.vmware.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=vmware&id=ProductDetailsPage&productID=94648100 [vmware.com]
VMware View Enterprise Starter Bundle + Platinum (24x7) 3 Year Support
Including View Mgr 3, VC Foundation and VI VDI licensed for 10 desktop VMs (Includes 1 ESX license for 2 CPUs)
$2,456.25
VMware View Enter
Hyper V - Free with Windows Server 2008 (Score:2)
Games? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason I have a Windows image at home is for a couple of games. So far, only VMWare Workstation can handle Windows gaming with any decent speed since it supports DirectX. Do any of the other virtualizers work well with gaming? I'm talking about games like COD4, America's Army, and others based on the UT2/UT3 engine.
Re:Games? (Score:4, Informative)
The only reason I have a Windows image at home is for a couple of games. So far, only VMWare Workstation can handle Windows gaming with any decent speed since it supports DirectX. Do any of the other virtualizers work well with gaming? I'm talking about games like COD4, America's Army, and others based on the UT2/UT3 engine.
It most certainly doesn't handle games with decent speed. Lets look at the game compability list, updated this month:
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-1287 [vmware.com]
Now lets look at your games:
COD4 - "Starts up fine, but too slow to play. Frame rate is about 2 FPS at 640x480 with all settings reduced to minimum. VM settings - 1.5GB ram, 2 VCPU's, optimize for VM."
America's Army - Not on the list
UT2/UT3 - Not on the list. Not sure which games on the list might be derivatives
Other complaints even for games reported to work are "choppy sound, minor texture glitches", "Sluggish, but playable.", "Flawless; low FPS", "Flickery top bar and "Sticky" graphics"
This does not sound to me like something a frequent gamer would put up with, when dual booting would give much better results.
VMWare is to be applauded for their DirectX effort, but they're not quite there yet.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
America's Army for Linux/Mac is 2.5 (4 or 5 version behind), and has ceased to be supported. There are very, very few servers to play on. There are rumors the new 3.0 client will be back for Linux, but I'll believe it when I see it.
By UT2 I meant UT2-engine based games. Sorry for not being clear.
I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Is VMware viewer this product http://store.vmware.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=vmware&id=ProductDetailsPage&productID=94648100 [vmware.com] ? If so, what does it exactly do for me? Can I create virtual machines? Can I open .vm machines? Can I connect to some remote server hosting and running the machines, like a VNC?
Thanks,
~T~
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Easy :
* VMware Fusion is for Windows Vista Starter
* VMware server is for Windows Vista Home Basic
* VMware workstation is for Windows Vista Premium
* VMware view is for Windows Vista Business
* VMware ESX is for Windows Vista Enterprise
* VMware Player is for Windows Vista Ultimate
* VMware ACE is for Windows 7
I think...
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
but seriously, VMware Fusion is for OSX only and offers desktop integration. The rest are for linux and windows. Server & Player are free, as is ACE i think, but the rest are generally for cost.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
* VMware Fusion - desktop virtualization on macs, also allows you to run individual windows apps but they appear as a window on your OSX desktop. Not free.
* VMware server - free virtual server hosting setup. Fairly basic, but allows you to run multiple OSes on a single physical server and linux or windows host OS, and have them provide services on the network - or RDP/VNC into them and use them for testing, etc.
* VMware workstation - similar to vmware fusion, but for linux/windows, and without the 'open an app as a native window' feature. Not free. Designed to create and snapshot multiple vms on your own desktop.
* VMware view - virtual desktops. You give your users their own personal desktop image, but it's stored on your ESX servers, not their local hard-drive. A bit like thin clients, but you virtualise the entire pc, not just the desktop. they break it with a virus? Spin them a new one off the spare pool, or bring their old one back from backup snapshot. Or just have a standard pool, and hand them out automatically as needed. Vmware view is the clientside app that lets them connect to their virtual desktop, but since all the virtualisation work is done serverside, the client can be low-power.
* VMware ESX - enterprise grade virtualisation server. Combined with vmware infrastructure, you run a bare minimum hypervisor (no overhead from a standard linux or windows OS host), store your virtual machines on a SAN or NFS, have a pool of physical servers and automatically load-balance your VMs between them or even bring them back up automatically if a physical server goes bang. Nearly completely abstract your servers from the hardware, run 20 servers per actual piece of tin. Very much not free.
* VMware Player - free basic app that lets you run VMs on your desktop, but not create them. Largely superceded by vmware server (now free) except for specific uses.
* VMware ACE - packaged VMs. You create a VM with workstation, send it out, then they run the ACE package on their local PC, with a VM OS + app setup inside it. Allows you to have a standardised VM available on your desktop machines, without all the overhead of ESX, SAN, network etc, but your desktops need to be grunty.
Parent
VMware and Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
VMware might not be a completely open source company but they've always been friendly towards open source software and make use of them. They've also contributed back as well such as extensions to the Linux kernel to make it run better as a guest in a paravirtualization environment, even though VMware can work using binary translation. They've also pushed heavily for an open VM format (OVF) so that users won't be locked into any specific virtualization vendor even though they're the dominant player in the market. They don't really see it as a zero-sum game. As long as virtualization as a whole keeps expanding, they benefit from it.
They also created and open sourced Review Board. [review-board.org]
VMware is very engineer driven and engineers have a tendency to favor openness.
R U kidding? (Score:3, Interesting)
> stave off Microsoft's dominance...
I am sorry, everyone knows VMWare had dominance, and never lost it for visualization.
M$ had to buy VirtualPC to compete, and even then could not make it work all that great.
They now improved on the technology with HyperVM, but have yet to transfer any client base from VMWare's list of clients, and therefor still have not come close to dominance.
I hate articles that are clueless about what they write, the writer wants to write a story about VMWare, but should stick with the facts, when they know nothing about the market shares involved.
This will just add to the great lead that VMWare has over any other in the field.
Re:R U kidding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Netscape Communicator 4 was one of the worst browsers I have ever used.
Netscape shot themselves by not releasing Netscape Communicator 5 in time. Netscape 4.5 was just 4.08 repackaged.
By 1998, IE4 had already caught up and had better support for HTML, CSS and other recommendations than Netscape.
VMWare on the other hand has been consistently releasing new versions with excellent new features and have maintained their lead.
Superior products do win.
Parent
Re:VMWare was always a doomed business. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea what you are talking about. VMware is far from doomed given the current "virtualize the moon" craze. Also, the fact that you called Sun's VirtualBox by the name OpenBox clues me into this fact. Also, the fact that you don't see HyperV as a threat to other virtualization systems, tells me you haven't played with it. It's fairly fast in a lot of performance tests, it's pretty damn stable compared to VMware, VirtualBox, and LVM. It also works for most Windows environment operations, something that you'll find other virtualization suites don't do. Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.
That's not very free...
Re:VMWare was always a doomed business. (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention the cost, free with a Windows Server 2008 license.
That's not very free...
Microsoft offers Virtual Server [microsoft.com] for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.
Parent
Re:VMWare was always a doomed business. (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft offers Virtual Server for free as a standalone download. My understanding is that it's a minimal Windows Server OS as the hypervisor.
Your understanding is wrong. Microsoft Virtual Server is an old MS product from the Virtual PC line. It does not have anything to do with Hyper-V.
What you probably meant is Microsoft Hyper-V Server [microsoft.com]. And yes, that one is actually free [microsoft.com] too.
Parent
The big thing for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that VMWare just fucking works. We use it at work and I'm real happy with it over all. It does it's job and does it well. I use Workstation on my desktop for managing images of lab machines (you can clone right out of the VM back to physical hardware, don't need to sysprep or anything if you took the original VM using VMWare converter) and we have a VMWare enterprise server for running some various servers on. We are working on virtualizing more as time goes on.
I've played with other virtual solutions and I find them all lacking in comparison to VMWare. Some of it is in terms of user features. For example VMWare has an extremely robust and easy to use snapshot system in their Workstation version. Real useful if you are screwing around with software that might blow up your image, and it can branch if you start playing with multiple versions and such.
A larger part would be that VMware seems to work well with all OSes. It runs Windows happily, it runs Linux happily, it runs OpenSolairs happily, etc. All the OSes I've tried with it run well and problem free. That's not the case for others I've messed with. They work well with whatever their favored OS(es) is but they don't work well or at all with others. Xen seems to work real well provided you are wanting to do Linux on Linux, but has problems with Windows. The MS solution I haven't played with much yet but I'm going to bet it doesn't care for Linux at all.
As I alluded to earlier there's also how it deals with physical systems. VMWare has a program called VMWare Converter that'll nab an image of a physical computer, and convert it to virtual. Good for taking a system that needs to be virtualized but would be hard to reinstall. However it works real well the other way too. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite runs in VMWare fine and can take an image of the system. However you don't need to do that, GSS will read vmdk files directly. So you can go back from virtual to physical with ease. Also as I said when done right this works with no sysprep or any of that. So you build a base image on hardware and get the necessary drivers. You convert that to virtual. You then setup software in the VM, where you've got snapshots and the like in case something goes wrong. When that's good, hand teh VM disk to Ghost and have it push the image to all your client machines. This isn't theoretical, by the way, I do it all the time.
I could go on but you get the idea. They do things better than others, or that others don't do.
So while VMware certainly isn't the only game in town, it does seem to be the only one that does a really good job. The others are probably good if you are in a more limited situation. Like if you are an all Linux shop, ok maybe Xen is what you need. However if you've got a mix of OSes, or you need to mess with physical as well as virtual, or need advanced features, well then VMware is your best, and maybe only, solution.
That may not translate to world domination, but should ensure a solid market. There's money to be made in doing things real well.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
On the Linux end "VirtualBOX OSE" is great for the desktop... then there's a bunch of freeware ones. Even KDE
Dude, I know KDE4 was doing a lot of wierd stuff... but did they build a whole virtualization system too?! Or just one more app that runs on Linux like VirtualBox, or well not "just another" because it's a lifesaver when you really want an app, there's no Linux counterpart and it just won't play nice in WINE.
Re:VMWare was always a doomed business. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem to that is a matter of perception and money. It's not that there aren't other viable options, it's how people perceive those options. When you talk to a manager in a mid to large size business, every last one of them is aware of VMware, and every last one of them is aware of Hyper-V because MS was so vocal about it. You may see some Fortune 500 guys who are big Sun shops that may talk about OpenBox, but that's not the norm.
So when the higher ups go out for lunch, are they talking about the open source virtual server? Probably not. They're probably talking about VMware or Hyper-V because that's what their friends companies are running.
Also, when was the last time an open source vendor took a higher up to an expensive lunch or on a business trip?
The worst part about corporate IT purchases is that they rarely have anything to do with quality or return on investment. They're usually made on a recomendation of a friend of a higher up, or back room deals. How many times have you seen a CIO go on an expensive all paid "business trip" from a company and all of a sudden you have an exclusive deal with them?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You meant VirtualBox OSE, right? OpenBox is a WM.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice little plug for a company...
http://citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=683148 [citrix.com]
Here's the real page.