[K12OSN] Re: K12OSN Digest, Vol 31, Issue 16

[Les Mikesell]

> VMWare server is wonderful. It is also free. Two caveats: 1) Fedora is not 
> officially supported as the Server Host but works fine as long as you have 
> your kernel sources installed to generate new kernel modules; adding 
> "kernel*" to your /etc/yum.conf exclude list will prevent breaking VMWare on 
> updates. 2) by default on booting the server host computer, ALL of your 
> defined virtual machines will be started.

This can be controlled per virtual machine from the vmware console.
Look under VM/settings, then the options tab and go down to
startup/shutdown.  You can make anything that provides needed
services start up automatically but not the ones you are testing
or only need for special purposes.

For anyone who hasn't used VMWare server yet, it has a lot of
useful features.  There are both Linux and Windows versions
available for free download, and the virtual machines can
be run under either so you can take advantage of any spare
capacity you might have.  The console runs independently from
the server, allows multiple connections, and also works
cross-platform.  If you have any old boxes around running some
legacy app you can't replace, you can move them into virtual
machines and consolidate some hardware.  There are a lot of
free pre-built 'appliance' machines configured to run specific
applications at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/.

As long as all the components can be redistributed you are allowed
to redistribute the machine, so someone might make a samba/ldap
virtual server that would be isolated from hardware or library
changes - or any other similar service.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com