stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 I know there are quite a few geeks on here... I work for a company called VMware that is currently one of the fastest software companies ever - in line with Oracle and Microsoft - yet a lot of folks haven't heard of us - hence the reason for this post. If you have heard of VMware, in what context? Apart from our plans for world domination, which includes the destruction of Microsoft , we do all kinds of stuff... checkout http://www.vmware.com. If you have not heard of us, we provide software that lets you run virtual machines - ie. more than one "M$ Windows" on the same piece of tin. In fact, you can run (on the same machine, at the same time, with no problems) - windows, linux, netware, solaris. And now we let you run Windows on Apple (codenamed Fusion) - with great 3D support (checkout youtube for a demo). Yours nosily, Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ir_fuel Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Yup, and currently using it on our servers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northernmunkeh Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 the company i work for acquired VMware Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ir_fuel Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev946 Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Never heard of VMWare. However, very interested. My daughter wants an Apple Laptop, but will need to ba able to work with the other PC's in the house plus MS Office etc. What's best? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ir_fuel Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Bootcamp, or parallels Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Yeah we use the workstation quite a lot. I'm trailing it on one of our bigger servers at the moment to see if its worth the cash. Having a few speed related issues at the moment. I was hoping we could install it on our 32-way 1.2TB RAM machine but I don't think I am going to be allowed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sl114 Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Yep we are using VMware on our SVN servers and intranet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Yep, used VmWare quite a bit in the last few years. When I was in college I did a network project using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 the company i work for acquired VMware Sweet... what do you think of the IPO then... not often a company goes from private -> bought -> IPO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Never heard of VMWare. However, very interested. My daughter wants an Apple Laptop, but will need to be able to work with the other PC's in the house plus MS Office etc. What's best? The best will be VMware Fusion when its available later this year. You can go out and buy Parallels now (from SWsoft) which will get you by for now if you need something today. Just be warned that if you choose parallels over VMware then you'll be missing out on some sexy stuff! Check this out (3D windows games running on Mac, thanks to VMware Fusion - Parallels can't do this). http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/02/cl ... _the_.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Yeah we use the workstation quite a lot. I'm trailing it on one of our bigger servers at the moment to see if its worth the cash. Having a few speed related issues at the moment. I was hoping we could install it on our 32-way 1.2TB RAM machine but I don't think I am going to be allowed What do you run on that machine today? SQL server? Not many apps can take advantage of that... that's what VMware is betting on - Moore's Law. With quad core, quad socket servers becoming standard soon VMware will be needed to divide up the processing power for apps. Little known fact (outside VMware): out of the billions of CPU utilisation records we have collected globally, the average figure is 6%. We usually see it at 3.5-5% when onsite. Multiply that by a few hundred servers, sucking in power and blowing out heat and that's a lot of waste! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 At the moment the machine has been partitioned into 8-way machines running either windows or linux. The machines are used for stress/reliability testing of the middle ware product I work on. It is amazing how many CPU cycles are wasted - We have around 40/50 4/8 way machines in our team a lot of which have been sitting around doing sod all. Just got a couple of blade servers too - quite nice to have 28 2xCPU DualCore 8GB machines. When we are up and running a lot of our machines will be working hard 24/7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 The best will be VMware Fusion when its available later this year. You can go out and buy Parallels now (from SWsoft) which will get you by for now if you need something today. Just be warned that if you choose parallels over VMware then you'll be missing out on some sexy stuff! Check this out (3D windows games running on Mac, thanks to VMware Fusion - Parallels can't do this). http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/02/cl ... _the_.html yeah I had heard about that. Will be interesting to see performance results against running nativly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 The best will be VMware Fusion when its available later this year. You can go out and buy Parallels now (from SWsoft) which will get you by for now if you need something today. Just be warned that if you choose parallels over VMware then you'll be missing out on some sexy stuff! Check this out (3D windows games running on Mac, thanks to VMware Fusion - Parallels can't do this). http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/02/cl ... _the_.html yeah I had heard about that. Will be interesting to see performance results against running nativly. Only if that's the most important thing to you... as you said, the vast majority of customers don't use their current throughput / capacity so their move to VMware is not affected by any performance issues. Those big, performant systems are in our scope now that we can run bigger VMs (e.g. 4vCPU)... if only Intel and AMD would get a move on with their hardware virtualization esp. for MMU... In fact, for P2Vs of old servers those buggers fly like crazy on the new hardware that VMware runs on (imagine that old NT4 system running on a PII, now its running on an AMD Opteron NUMA quad core accessing its data over a SAN... and it hasn't got a clue that is happening!) VMware have created a new benchmark you might be interested called VMmark. Here's a link to it on VMTN - our QA / performance team are awesome and they quadruple check everything the kernal / monitor guys do. http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/ If you need any help, mate, just PM me - I work in Practice Development so I have my fingers stuck into all sorts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Steve, Shameful marketing.....also did not expect and an Evil Machine (only joking) chap on here, thought you boys were all porkers. I work for an ISV, in the top 5 (market cap) so know both pre and post acquire. Just too even up, there is Zen and Virtual server, but yes VMWare is great stuff and I have many customers using masses of the stuff. Which vertical do you cove Steve + Northern Monkey. Also would like too understand why virtualise servers when people want applications virtualised. Might catch up with one of you at a show/confernece and you can convert me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Do you know if VMs which have been imported from Workstation have performance issues over those which have been created on the GSX Server from scratch? [GSX3.0.1 which we have on a years trial] We have found that doing disk 'things' in the VMs can be cripling i.e. Guest - XP Pro - Unzipping a 20MB file on the desktop take 5/10 minutes with the VM on our GSX Server (IBM x440). The same VM running on my laptop did it in a few seconds. Lookin at the performance of the server its not hitting its discs lots so not a real hardware limit. I've no idea what it could be. The sort of thing I need to spend time 'playing', unfortunatly got lots of work on so don't have the spare time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Do you know if VMs which have been imported from Workstation have performance issues over those which have been created on the GSX Server from scratch? [GSX3.0.1 which we have on a years trial] We have found that doing disk 'things' in the VMs can be cripling i.e. Guest - XP Pro - Unzipping a 20MB file on the desktop take 5/10 minutes with the VM on our GSX Server (IBM x440). The same VM running on my laptop did it in a few seconds. Lookin at the performance of the server its not hitting its discs lots so not a real hardware limit. I've no idea what it could be. The sort of thing I need to spend time 'playing', unfortunatly got lots of work on so don't have the spare time. Have you pre-allocated the virtual disk? If you haven't, it will keep asking for extensions to the underlying OS and slow things down. When you create the virtual disk for the VM, make sure its all preallocated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Steve,Shameful marketing.....also did not expect and an Evil Machine (only joking) chap on here, thought you boys were all porkers. I work for an ISV, in the top 5 (market cap) so know both pre and post acquire. Just too even up, there is Zen and Virtual server, but yes VMWare is great stuff and I have many customers using masses of the stuff. Which vertical do you cove Steve + Northern Monkey. Also would like too understand why virtualise servers when people want applications virtualised. Might catch up with one of you at a show/confernece and you can convert me. I cover world wide, all verticals. Damn, please don't accuse me of marketing... I only saw Bill Hicks having a go at marketing the other day on youtube It seems that the geeks amongst us have heard of VMware, but the non-geeks haven't. That fits, but we expect it to change sometime soon Thanks for the answers, chaps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Do you know if VMs which have been imported from Workstation have performance issues over those which have been created on the GSX Server from scratch? [GSX3.0.1 which we have on a years trial] We have found that doing disk 'things' in the VMs can be cripling i.e. Guest - XP Pro - Unzipping a 20MB file on the desktop take 5/10 minutes with the VM on our GSX Server (IBM x440). The same VM running on my laptop did it in a few seconds. Lookin at the performance of the server its not hitting its discs lots so not a real hardware limit. I've no idea what it could be. The sort of thing I need to spend time 'playing', unfortunatly got lots of work on so don't have the spare time. Have you pre-allocated the virtual disk? If you haven't, it will keep asking for extensions to the underlying OS and slow things down. When you create the virtual disk for the VM, make sure its all preallocated. Good point. I will have to change the disk so its all pre-allocated. Still does not explain why there was such a difference between nativly on slower CPUs than on the larger server Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 If you do Gov work let me know as could partner up and a few things. You a PM then, or just a busy boy and work for a living. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Who me? Aye, we do lots of US / UK gov work. Ridiculously huge contracts, but got to get ridiculous income tax / national insurance give away back somehow Come to the Reading meet and we can talk shop all night! PS. Assume PM = Project Manager, not Product Manager? I'm kinda like a product manager but for services not software... so I make @*!# up, then sell it and deliver it - that's the general jist anywayz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 Will try to make the meet. PM was product by the way. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted February 19, 2007 Author Share Posted February 19, 2007 Ah, so yes I am a PM, but for services. I also have marketing in my title but after seeing Bill Hicks I'm scared of associating with that crowd (they are pretty bad too!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mugwump Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 been using it for about 3 years (since ~ workstation 3/4 I think) but then I am very sad..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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