VMware Server

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VMware Server

The web interface of VMware Server 2.0.0
Developed by	VMware, Inc.
Latest release	2.0 (build 116503) / 23 September 2008; 56 days ago
OS	Microsoft Windows Linux
Platform	x86-compatible
Type	Virtual machine
License	Proprietary, Freeware
Website	VMware Server

VMware Server 1.0.6 on Windows

VMware Server 1.0 running Microsoft Windows XP Professional as a guest under a Linux host

VMware Server (formerly GSX Server) is an entry-level server virtualization software suite from VMware, Inc., a subsidiary of EMC Corporation. VMware released version 1.0 of Server on July 12, 2006. Server is a continuation of the retired GSX Server product line. VMware Server can create, edit, and play virtual machines. It uses a client-server model, allowing remote access to virtual machines, at the cost of some graphical performance (and 3D support). In addition to the ability to run virtual machines created by other VMware products, it can also run virtual machines created by Microsoft Virtual PC. VMware, Inc. makes Server freely available in the hope that users will eventually upgrade to VMware ESX Server.

Users of VMware Server's internal utilities can preserve (and revert to) a single snapshot copy of each separate virtual machine within their VMware Server environment. The product does not have a specific interface for cloning virtual machines, unlike VMware Workstation.

1 Known issues
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Known issues

Known limitations of VMware Server, as of August 2008, include the following:

Hardware support

VMware virtual machines do not support FireWire.^[1]
VMware Server does not support 3D hardware acceleration.^[2]
Only 3 mouse buttons function inside the guest OS. Five-button mice remain unsupported.^{[citation needed]}

OS support

VMware Server is not officially supported on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.^[3] However despite the vendor's lack of support, the 64-bit version of VMware Server 2.0 will nevertheless install on the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista due to its kernel being the same as Server 2008. Alternatively, 32-bit Windows VMWare Server 2.0 hosts on Intel EM64T VT-enabled and AMD64 processors can run 64-bit editions of Windows as a guest OS, but may be restricted by the amount of addressable physical memory of the underlying 32-bit architecture.

VMware Server does have native 64-bit host support on Linux. 64-Bit Solaris 10 1/06 (Update 1) and Solaris 10 6/06 (Update 2) running as a guest will fail with a triple fault on Intel Pentium M-based systems Merom, Woodcrest, and Conroe. Sun Microsystems has published a workaround for this issue.^[4]

Network protocols

Attempting to mount an NFS share from a NAT'ed instance of VMware Server may result in a permission-denied error.^[5] To fix the problem, switch the VMware instance to use bridged networking rather than network address translation (NAT). Bridged networking implies adding another device on a network, while NAT uses the VMware server to assign the instance an IP address, either through DHCP or through a static IP configuration. Another method of dealing with the permission-denied error involves using port forwarding, but this results in more complexity.

VMware Server can swallow CPU interrupts, which makes keeping the clock accurate difficult.^[6] For this reason, Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers should not be run under virtualised Operating Systems, including VMware. Other issues include running Windows Time Service (usually as an Active Directory Domain Controller), Kerberos and other services and daemons relying on accurate local time. VMware Server provides a solution whereby the guest's OS clock is periodically syncronised with the host OS (which in turn can be configured to synchronize with an NTP server for even more accuracy).^[6] ^[7] These issues can also be solved outside the realm of VMware Server, by utilising external (and physical) NTP servers.