Virtualization

Somehow this week I started checking out virtualization software. Virutalization software lets you run multiple OS's simultaneously as if they were each running on a single machine. There are many ways to do this and a number of software packages that allow it. I looked at Xen, Qemu, and VMware. I actually ran virutal machines using Qemu and VMware but not Xen. This technology is really interesting and I think its going to take off in the future. You can see evidence of this by its adoption in the form of virtual private servers at hosting companies like RimuHosting and the fantastic IPO that VMware had. Now seems like a good time to learn more about this stuff, especially with the way VMware has been hiring.

VMware has opened up a few of its software products as free downloads. I tried out VMware Player which lets you run virtual machines on your computer but not create them. To get the virtual machine images you can download them from VMware's catalog, download other 3rd party pre-built images, or "roll your own". I grabbed a preinstalled version of Fedora 7 and tried it out. It works really well. The only catch is that for it to work smoothely you really need to install a set of tools from VMware, but they are only available in the paid for versions. I downloaded a trial version of their VMware workstation and used that to get the tools. The tools make things like mouse movement and sharing files between the two systems easier. Right now I haven't done too much else with it besides install, but I look forward to checking out more of the features later.