Windows and Linux
A few weeks ago, before I went on holiday (just before), my backup DNS server stopped working… Just dead, PSU works, and no time to investigate. It’s a bit old, and I was itching to do another build, but I had a holiday to go on first.
Ok, back. First things first, I have an Athlon BE-2350, a 690G based motherboard, 2GiB of memory and a 500GiB disk. Other bits lying around as well, but at the time that’s what I intended to use.
I had three goals.
- Replace a noisy dual Xeon (read P4) monster, with fans so powerful that it gently hovers off the floor. This runs Windows XP.
- Replace the backup DNS server, a tiny little EPIA, barely powerful enough to tell the time of day. This runs Fedora 8 Linux.
- Do it all in one box.
Welcome to the world of server consolidation, at home.
Firstly I thought that running a Linux hypervisor is the obvious way to go. One VM for Windows, another for Linux. I installed Ununtu 8 desktop. I wanted a pretty system, that could also act as a print server :-).
- KVM. This is nice, but not exactly stable. I tried booting from the Windows install CD, and that worked. It also started to install, but on reboot I get an error message like ‘Failed to read from device’, or some such. No help was forthcoming, and other VM products exist.
My second gripe is the UI to KVM. It’s nice, and has lots of potential, but when used from across the network it just crashes, every time. - VirtualBox. I have read a lot from people using this, and for desktop use I love it. But for server use it lacks the management tools that I want.
- VMware Server. An old classic, and yes this worked. Big but, it f****d up my networking big time. I couldn’t get updates, or access half of the internet after installing it. .. Now, with time and effort I may have been able to diagnose the problem, but I wasn’t up for that, and there was this nagging feeling that I’m still doing the wrong thing.
The right thing… Problem is, that I want to use Windows as a desktop. Plug in printers, scanners, memory devices, run games. Basically I wanted a full speed Windows system, but wasn’t admitting it to myself. So how to square that circle? Ahhh, install Windows natively and a VM under Windows.
- Microsoft Virtual Server. Nice idea, but I just could not get Linux to install. It would hang half way through booting, and I couldn’t find any good advice, or anyone having similar problems. Bad start.
- VMware Server. First impression, BLOAT WARE!!!… Seriously big download, but don’t be put off by that, this is good software. It installed without problems, setting up my VM was a breeze, and Linux installed without problems… The tools themselves may take up a lot of disk space, but they’re not memory hogs. Once running you’ll hardly notice it’s there.
Final thoughts? I love Linux, but not enough to risk my sanity on it. It’s a great server environment, and I am eager to see KVM mature. For home use though, go for convenience, and VMware Server certainly is convenient.
