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Ever get the feeling that there just aren’t any killer app’s anymore? If
you were around during the heyday of the desktop computer and the early
Internet, it seemed like a day didn’t go by without some totally awesome
application appearing on one of the shareware sites. These days, it feels like
all the stuff coming out is just a rehash of what we saw in 1996.
Ever get the feeling that there just arent any killer apps anymore? If you were around during the heyday of the desktop computer and the early Internet, it seemed like a day didnt go by without some totally awesome application appearing on one of the shareware sites. These days, it feels like all the stuff coming out is just a rehash of what we saw in 1996.
However, here’s something that really is new and very cool. The
product is VMWare. The handy tool allows you to run multiple, different
operating system simultaneously on the same machine! You heard it
right. Run Linux, FreeBSD, Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 2000 all at the
same time.
Great For Application Developers
There are a lot ways you can but VMWare to use for yourself or your
organization. If you are an applications developer, you need to be able to
develop for multiple platforms. In this past, this meant dedicating several
machines to different operating systems, and then moving from machine to
machine. Or, you could install multiple operating systems on a single machine,
and use a boot manager to reboot the machine into the alternate platform. With
VMWare you don’t have to do that. You run all your development platforms
simultaneously. Now more moving around or restarting the computer!
A Boon to MCSEs in Training
A lot of beginning and established MCSEs don’t have multiple computers on
their practice network. They might be able to afford two or three computers, but
in order to get a good feel for many of the new and powerful networking features
available in Windows 2000 and the new BackOffice (.Net) Server family you’ll
need many more computers. You can place VMWare on each machine, and run two,
three, four or more operating systems on each machine, turning your 3 computer
network into a 12 computer network that runs all the latest and greatest
Microsoft Server applications. Instead of spend $12,000US on a bunch of new
computers, you can spend $99.00 x 3 ($297.00) for a license for each of the
machines.
What’s It Like?
After you install the VMWare software you’ll run the Guest Operating
System configuration wizard. A Guest Operating System is an operating system
that runs in a virtual machine inside the operating system you booted into
during machine startup. For example, if I started the computer up in Windows
2000 Professional, I can run Windows 2000 Server as a Guest in a Virtual
Machine.
You pick the operating system you want from a list in the configuration
wizard, as seen below:
After you’ve created the base configure for the operating system you want,
the next step is to install that operating system into the virtual machine. The
easiest by to do this is to use a bootable CD, which is supported by VMWare. If
you are installing an operating system, such as Windows 95 (that doesn’t
include a bootable CD), you can install DOS first and add CD-ROM drivers
(generic IDE CD-ROM drivers work fine) and then install Windows 95 or Windows
3.x.
Once the installation of the Guest operating system is complete, you’re
ready to rock! You just click the “Power On” button in the VMWare
console, and the Virtual Machine starts up just as if it were a physical device,
complete with BIOS startup screen and all!
Is There Anything Else Cool About VMWare?
As an instructor, when of my most frustrating experiences relates to teaching
about fault-tolerant disk sets. The vast majority of training centers have
computers that contain only a single hard disk, and therefore we are not able to
actually implement fault tolerance configurations. While Microsoft often
provides videos (or I make my own) of how to do this, its just not the same as
having the students do it themselves and learn about the vagaries of configuring
different RAID types.
With VMWare, you can create multiple virtual hard disks, and configure any
kind of RAID configuration you like! Check out the screen shot below to see what
I mean.
For More Information:
For more information on VMWare, check out the VMWare website
HERE.
