Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 6:36 am

I decided to create a new topic to talk about VMware so that the zApp topic doesn't get too contaminated.

Anyway, my main question for VMware users is performance. When you are running an application in a virtual machine, how does it perform compared to running it on the normal computer without VMware?

Is it like an emulator where it runs a lot slower? Or can you really keep VMware running all of the time and work easily in different virtual machines?

How long does it take to switch between virtual machines?

For references, I've got a 3Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM (thinking of upgrading to 1GB of RAM given what a memory hog Delphi has been these days)

On the VMWare site they talk about networking. Does that mean each virtual machine can look like another computer on the network with file sharing, etc?

The more I read about it, the better it sounds. Almost wonder why I haven't been running this for years if it really does everything that they claim.

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 1:23 pm

Zugg,

I've used both VMWare and Virtual PC. They are very similar, except that Virtual PC has trouble running Linux distros. Each virtual OS you create takes about 4 Gigs of hardware space. 4Gigs if with all of the OS patches, and development tools (WinXP Pro, VS 2003 or VS 2005, and all of my utilities).

The clean OS images are about 1Gig each, this is for all of the OS I've tested: Win 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT4, 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, and Mandrake Linux.

Your main computer has to be robust with lots of memory, hard drive space, and at least a 2Ghz CPU.

I don't use VMWare now, because my last job purchased MSDN Universal for me, and it comes with Virtual PC. I've been using it to run WinXP Pro with Visual Studio 2005 to test a large program I'm writting.

The best strategy is to build a clean virtual OS, then burn it to DVD. Then use these clean OS to add the tools you need for testing, then burn those to DVD as well. You could alternatively save these images to a computer/server on your network (what I do) and copy them back to your computer when you need to run them. I don't recommend running virtual OS images from the network, since performance of the virtual OS will be painful. I have an AMD 3000+ with 1Gig RAM, and when I tried running the images from my servers, it behaved like a P333. So now, I just copy the image to one of my local drives when I need to test something in one of the images that I have.

My setup allows my virtual machines to behave like a 1Ghz CPU. I set Virtual PC to use a maximum of 512Megs of RAM. I only usually run one Virtual PC instance when I use it.

Each virtual OS acts like it's own separate computer, and I always give each virtual machine it's own IP address. I always put anything that my virtual machines need to share on a network drive. That way I can copy everything back and forth. Sometimes I might just put stuff on a website, but I only do that if I'm feeling lazy. ;)

My system allows me to switch between images in about 30 to 45 seconds. If the images are on the network it takes anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes to switch.

Both Virtual PC and VMWare will need special drivers for video, and these restrict what video sizes you can test. This also means that you CAN'T debug video card problems with virtual machines. Virtual PC lets you use most of the peripherals hooked up to your computer. VMWare had problems with this, the last time I tested it.

HTH!

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

I work with VMWare 3.1 at work and Virtual PC at home. I believe VMWare is up to 4.5 now if I'm not mistaken. Between the two I think Virtual PC is slightly nicer (oddly enough, I got Lindows to work on Virtual PC and not VMWare so I'll have to disagree with bortaS unless he is referring to a newer version of VMWare.) With Virtual PC I can drag and drop files into an OS rather than just using networking. I believe the newer version of VMWare can do that now, also.

The truth is, you will not go wrong with either. When I bought Virtual PC it was not yet owned by Microsoft so I have no idea how Microsoft has been upgrading it, but even the older version I have at home is adequate. VMWare is still being aggressively supported.

Also, as far upgrading your machine to 1Gig I definitely recommend that when working with virtual machines, esp. if you plan on creating a Delphi environment in one. I've created a development environment in a Win98 machine so I can more easily track down problems with the older OS's and it really helps.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

I know microsoft has an advanced version of virtual pc which is meant for actual production environment to run servers or test client machines in on a virtual cpu instead of buying more hardware. This particular version has the option to run all hdd changes into a seperate file and when you close out you can commit the changes or discard them.... if discarded, the next time you boot that image, it has no idea that you had been on the previous time and is still in the pristine condition it originally was. You can also pause the OS in a certain state so instead of having to wait for 98 to boot each time in the virtual machine, just have your master image be already booted up and waiting.

This is one of those solutions that is perfect for tech classroom and test machine purposes... or even running some server app that doesn't get along well with others and needs to be 'on its own box'... well just run it on a virtual server and save hardware. This product will run on win XP pro and 2003 server.

The one thing you need to remember for any of the virtual pc products is the host machine needs a _lot_ of extra RAM.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Both Virtual PC and VMWare does this. I usually have my my virtual machines set to "undoable" unless it's for development purposes.

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 6:38 pm

I was just reading about the v5 beta of VMware. It has an improved "snapshot" ability where snapshots can be linked to other snapshots. So you can have a WinXP-base snapshot, then a WinXP-SP1 snapshot linked to the first, and then a WinXP-SP2 linked to the second. This seems to save a lot of disk space over having each as a separate virtual system. Sounds like a really useful way to handle all sorts of different system configurations (small fonts vs large fonts, different versions of MDAC, etc).

Taking 30-40 seconds to switch between machines sounds like a lot longer than I was expecting though. But if it operates like a 1Ghz machine when you have a AMD 3000+ then that's fine for most testing. In fact, being able to slow down the virtual machine and have it use less memory is actually a really good way to see how software might perform on slower systems.

In the past I have kept my development system slow so that I would have a better feeling for what the typical end-user might experience. Seems like with VMware I don't need that restriction any more. I can install all sorts of fancy stuff on the development system and use VMware for the "clean install" testing.

I'm going to install the extra memory today and give the VMware a try tonight. Not sure if I want to try v4.5 or go ahead and try the v5 beta (which is currently at RC1 status).

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Cool! I like the new snapshot ability in VMWare 5. I got several gigs taken up just for virtual machines.

Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 8:24 am

Installed VMware 5 Beta tonight. Cool program. The hardest thing was dealing with the various problems with installing old versions of Windows:

1) Most of my CDs are for *upgrades*. Getting it to recognize older version CDs to let me install the upgrade was a pain. But I finally got the Win2000 upgrade to recognize my old Win NT 4 CD and got Win2000 installed.

2) Windows 98 was even more of a pain. Apparently my Win98 CD isn't bootable. I found a site called http://www.bootdisk.com that has disk images for various boot disks. I then had to get a program called WinImage to create a floppy image that VMware could read. Got the virtual floppy booted so I could run FDISK and FORMAT on the virtual C drive. Then got to the Win98 CD and started it up.

3) Of course, my Win98 CD was also an upgrade version, and it took some messing around before it finally recognized the Win95 CD. You can't just remove the Win98 CD and put the Win95 CD in. VMware complains about the disk change. Fortunately I have a second CD drive on this computer and was able to tell VMware to switch to that drive, let Win98 see the Win95 disk, and then was able to continue.

4) I had forgotten about how horrible these old installers were. We really are spoiled these days with Windows XP.

Anyway, that's all I got done tonight. But tomorrow it looks like I'll be able to test my software on Win98 again.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Was I right that the new version allows you to dag 'n drop files from you host OS to your virtual machine? It's a feature I really like in Virtual PC but wasn't in VMWare 3.1.

Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 6:26 am

Yep, you can drag and drop files from the desktop to any virtual machine. Really a cool feature. Also copy/paste between virtual machines and the desktop. I'm really impressed by the integration between the virtual machines and the normal desktop, along with the virtual networking.

But the drag/drop is a must-have feature since it's one of the easiest ways to get files into a Windows 95 machine without worrying about the hassles of network setup in Win95 (which was a mess).

I'm also impressed by the speed. They claim to have made improvements in the Beta 5 so I don't know what previous versions were like, but switching between virtual machines that are running is instantaneous. Going from a suspended state to a resumed session is about 10-15 seconds, which isn't bad at all.

In general, looking at all of the features that were added in v4 and v5, I'd have to say that it is a *lot* better than it was in v3.1. Looks like competition is a good thing once again.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

When the circumstances justify it, I'll probably buy VMWare 5. It sounds like it has features I would really appreciate.

Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:15 am

Hmm, you post a VMWare question, and I miss it completely.. I wonder if theres an RSS of the forums anywhere.. ? (Gotta move with the times.. )

Anyfish, it seems you already answered most of your questions.. It runs some slower than the host machine (obviously), and can stay running if you want it to.. I'd advise a memory upgrade though, since either you give your VMs about 128m each, and they run slowly, or you can only run one, and give that one 300 or so (each will need its own memory chunk of the real memory available).

As you've also probably noticed, the networking runs fine.. (yes, and why havent you been using it, indeed? :)

I havent tried vmware 5 yet, I seem to be getting behind (but I've had all the rest from 1.0 onwards.. ) the drag&drop files really sounds nifty.. I wonder what it does with a linux guest..

As for the speed, I think 1 & 2 were pretty good, for the hardware of the time, after that the guests (winXP etc) got chunkier, and VMWare didnt keep up so well.. my Win95 VM still runs orders of magnitude faster than the WinXP one.. (but both do run, on a PII/300 guest..)

Well, glad you're trying it out, and good luck with it! (At work, I have around 10 VMs installed, for all combinations of NT/2k/XP and the various Excel versions, great for testing.. !)

Lady C.

Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:18 pm

There should be an RSS button on the main www.zuggsoft.com home page. It hasn't gotten a lot of testing, but give it a try.

Thanks for the additional info and opinions. I'm still playing with it in my "spare" time, which hasn't been much in the past couple of days. But it looks like I'll definitely be buying it. But I like the v5 so much, I am waiting till it becomes public. v4 and v5 don't use exactly the same virtual machine format, so in order to use some of the v5 features you have to recreate your virtual machines, and that's what really takes all of the time. Hopefully they won't change the format between the current beta and the public release (I think it is RC1 status right now, so they are getting close).