Virtualization Shootout VMware Server vs. Virtual. Box vs. KVM. Virtualization is a buzzword thats been making its way around the. IT circles for a few years. On paper, virtualization sounds. CPU cycles, leverage. Many people think virtualization is good only in the. Linux machines, as well as. In this article, I put three of them through their. VMware Server, Virtual. Box and KVM. But wait you may exclaim, Why arent you evaluating. Xen, although extremely powerful, is more of an. Linux user. If youre going to be building a data center or. Gain the cost savings, security, and customization available with Linuxbased virtual desktops by integrating Cisco UCS servers with RHEL desktops on Horizon View. VMware vSphere Update Manager 5. 5 Update 3 16 September 2015 Build 2735933. Last Document Update 16 September 2015. Check frequently for additions and updates. VMware Workstation is a hosted hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems an x86 version of earlier releases was available it. VirtualBox is a generalpurpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use. For a thorough introduction to virtualization and. Support site offering resources for Citrix Presentation Server, VDI, VMWare, Xen, Microsoft Terminal Services, SoftGrid and others. I think the official Azure instructions on how to capture a VM image must be either incorrect or incomplete. Ive run a variety of tests myself detailed below and. Internet, thats. Xen. This is one of the reasons Ubuntu. KVM, rather than Xen, as its open source. I follow that reasoning here. First, I should define a couple terms for the purposes of this article. A host is a physical machine running one of the virtualization. A guest, virtual machine or VM is the virtual machine. Because this is a shootout, I assign point values to categories. The values. range from 1 to 3, with 1 being poor, 2 being average and 3. All of the virtualization packages are installed. Ubuntu 9. 0. 4 host. The categories are as follows. Ease of installation. Administrative tools. VMware has been providing virtualization solutions for ten years, and as such. With at least six. VMware has a package that will fit your needs. The product I review here. VMware Server 2. 0. Its free as in beer and is very. VMware Workstation 14 Pro Build 6661328. Last updated 26 SEPT 2017. Check for additions and updates to these release notes. Everything in the admin console is easy to use. Creating a virtual machine is a simple matter, thanks to VMwares excellent formbased wizards. Ease of Installation. VMware Server ships as a 5. MB Windows executable, a 4. MB RPM or. a 4. 66. MB tarball. Because Im installing on an Ubuntu machine, I use. Kicking off the installation is fairly straightforward on. Ubuntu. Simply ensure that youve got the build essential package installed. Then, untar. the tarball and run. vmware install as root, and follow along with the. The installer will prompt you for the paths to where you want to. Its acceptable to choose the defaults, as. One thing to note is that due to VMwares free as in beer license. VMware site before you can run. Make sure you have registered on the VMware site and have your serial. Ease of installation score 2. This is mostly due to VMware requiring. It works well. once you get it installed, and you can take the defaults on just about. Administrative Tools. If youve used VMware Server 1. The 2. 0 version of the product uses a Web based. Figure 1. Everything in the admin console is easy to use. Creating a virtual. VMwares excellent form based. Simply fill in the blanks, and VMware will create an appropriate. VM and get it ready for its first boot. VMware Server provides a virtual. Web interface to the virtual machine as well Figure 2. It requires installing a Firefox plugin, but the console works well and doesnt. Unfortunately, the plugin doesnt work on the Mac. Firefox. VMware also allows you to console to the machine remotely via VNC. This. requires adding the lines Remote. Display. vnc. enabled. Remote. Display. vnc. In short, the VMware administrative console is excellent. The Web based. GUI is easy to navigate, and the tools work well on Linux or Windows. The. ability to enable VNC access to a virtual machines console without. Web GUI could prove invaluable in certain administrative cases. Administrative tools score 3. VMwares experience in the field shows. VMware Servers historical connections to the GSX commercial. VMware Server is an extremely capable virtualization platform. Its ancestor is VMwares first generation commercial server product. VMware GSX, so it has a great pedigree. VMware Servers key features include. The ability to run on standard x. Two processor Virtual SMP, allowing a single virtual machine to span two. A snapshot feature, allowing you to capture the state of a VM and then roll. Support for bridged, NAT and host only network interfaces. Support for USB devices and controllers. All these features mean that VMware Server is a great platform for. Ive personally had a. VMware Server host with a couple guest machines running continuously. Capabilities score 3. VMware has been building its feature set for. VMware Server has a proprietary license with appropriate EULA for this. Although its technically free, its free as in. VMware does make. GPL that VMware modifies. In order to use the software. VMware Web site and get a serial number in. Although this is available at no cost, it isnt. Licensing score 1. VMwares proprietary license and EULA mean you cant. Youre at the mercy of VMware. If Free Software. VMware Server total score 9.