Second look at VMWare Server 2

Second look at VMWare Server 2

I had a chance to take another look at VMWare Server 2 (Still GSX) and had a much better time with it.  In my opinion, this product is more like a demo product that just a free virtualization server though.  It used to be that there was really no difference between the server (GSX) and the workstation products, at least as far as use.  Now it's more like a free version of the ESX server.  It moved to having a web interface and feels much more like Virtual Infrastructure.  I created about 10 virtual servers with multiple network interfaces and started to play around.  The best thing about using it this time vs the last time I tried it, was now there is are boot options so you don't have to have lightning speed to boot from CDROM anymore.  You can configure that before you power on the virtual machine.  The dashboard was great, and I even liked the fact that I didn't need a client.  Using the web browser was just fine.

My experience was all aces right up until I wanted to use a physical device to add to my virtual file server.  The only options for disks are the file based options.  It's been a long time since v1, but I swear that physical devices were an option and now it's not.  That's when I realized that v2 is more to show off some of the things that VMWare can do and if I want to do the complicated things, then I would need to buy ESX.  So it's more like shareware, where if you want all the options enabled then you have to pay.  It's a fine business model, I just didn't know that going into it though.  I just had this feeling that if physical disks are not available, what other things are disabled in this version?

I tried solving my problem with using ISCSI to the host device.  At first, this was fine, but as I was transferring files to my virtual file server, the virtual machine crashed hard.  Not a big deal, I'll just reboot the system. -THIS- is the one thing that killed VMWare for me.  The reboot request is sent, and then stops at 95% complete.  I kept hitting the virtual power button to my virtual machine and it would not power off.  I ssh'd into the host server and kill off the offending process which finally cleared my pending task, but the process just hung out as a zombie process and I couldn't get the VM to power on.  I had to reboot the whole server which killed the Internet because my firewall is also a VM.  After the reboot, I tried it again and everything happened all over again.

Here why that's a deal breaker for me.  When using clustered servers, you (almost) need to have something called STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head).  That is, you need a way to pretty much power cycle or power off a machine that's freaking out.  The most common is a remote control power strip where you can cycle the power right at the strip.  I figured that a cheap way of achieving this was to use virtual machines.  If you need to STONITH a node, you can send a command to the host to virtually power cycle it.  This works great for dealing with kernel panics or conditions where the server pretty much dead but is still holding on.

In the end I dumped the whole thing and rebuilt the host as a Xen dom0 running Gentoo.  I haven't tested the ISCSI yet, but I have access to physical disks now.  Also, STONITH is as simple as "xm destroy servername" which is easier than looking as some API docs.

Overall, VMWare Server 2 was outstanding.  It was really easy to use, and I had no real trouble installing the product.  I liked that it mimicked Virtual Infrastructure, and gave me a nice dashboard.  If you need basic virtualization or want to learn it, start here.  I simply had more complicated needs.