VMware Workstation 3.2

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VMware Workstation 3.2

Develop and test on multiple platforms - with a singlemachine.

By Brian Noyes

One of the more challenging aspects of distributedapplication development is system configuration control. You often need to havemultiple platforms with different configurations available for both developmentand testing, and you probably don't have the resources or time to build newmachines repeatedly.

For these and many other situations, VMware Workstation3.2 is nothing short of a godsend for developers who want explicit, flexible,and total control over multiple system configurations that can all run on asingle machine. VMware Workstation allows you to create one or more virtualmachines that run within a secure virtual boundary on your machine. You can runVMware on Windows NT4, 2000, and XP, as well as Linux. The virtual machine(guest) OS can be any non-mobile variant of Windows, DOS, Linux, and even oneUnix variant. You can load as many guest operating systems as you have disk spacefor, and you even can run them side by side if you have enough memory on themachine (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. You can run one or more virtual machines on a single machine.Here you can see an instance of Linux 7.3 and Windows 2000 Server running in virtualmachines on a Windows XP Pro host machine.

Be a Configuration Control Freak

One of the biggest benefits of VMware Workstation is itgives you total control over the configuration of a given virtual machineinstance and lets you restore that configuration quickly from a simplefile-based backup. You also can run the virtual machine from another physicalmachine simply by moving the files to that machine, assuming it has a licensedcopy of VMware Workstation on it as well.

In addition to manual control of software configurations,VMware gives you some neat automatic controls. The normal mode of operation fora VMware virtual machine is "Persistent," which means files on the virtual diskare modified as they would be if running on a normal machine. But VMware alsoprovides "Undoable" and "Nonpersistent" modes. With these modes, you canprevent changes made during a run of the virtual machine from being saved tothe virtual disk. This is extremely useful for any number of testing,experimenting, and debugging scenarios.

VMware also gives you good control of the hardwareconfiguration. You can control what hardware on the host machine is accessibleon the virtual machine and can change those settings any time the virtualmachine is not running. You can add or remove access to ports and drives,change the amount of memory allocated, and change network configurationsettings to adapt the machine to your needs. You can choose from severalnetworking options to allow you to treat the virtual machine as just anotherworkstation on your LAN.

The performance is better than you might expect. You cantweak VMware to get the best performance while working in the virtual machine,but for most tasks you will notice little difference from working on the hostmachine. Just be sure you have sufficient memory for both the host and thevirtual machine OSs to avoid "disk thrash."

When you consider all the flexibility that VMwareWorkstation gives you for the price tag, it is really hard to pass up. Thescenarios where VMware can be a significant cost and time saver are numerous.You can download a 30-day trial version from the Web site.

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VMware Inc.

3145 Porter Drive

Palo Alto, CA 94304

Rating:

Phone: (877) 4VMWARE; (650) 475-5000

E-mail: mailto:[email protected]

Web Site: http://www.vmware.com

Price: Starts at US$299

Brian Noyes is an independent software consultant andpresident of Software Insight (http://www.softinsight.com).He's a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer with more than 11 years ofprogramming, design, and engineering experience. Brian specializes inarchitecture, design, and coding of cutting-edge software systems, and he is acontributing editor for asp.netPRO and other publications. E-mail him at mailto:[email protected].

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