Migrating off Vmware-Server, but where to?

[Kent Borg]

Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
>> Unfortunately, according to [1] vmware-server has been EOLed, and there
>> does not appear to be a "free" (as in beer) replacement.
>>     
>
> [...]
> In most ways, I would really rather be running KVM, since I feel like it
> has a bright future, and Oracle hasn't shown itself to be a particularly
> good steward for free software projects

Hear, hear.

Allow me to restate the obvious: The whole reason the question came up 
is that vmware-server is going away because Vmware decided to drop it. 
Switching to Virtualbox would put you in the same pickle the day Larry 
might make a similar decision.

So if you can use kvm, do so.


Recently I did a bunch of kvm playing, writing some Python scripts to 
automate setting up an isolated virtual network testbed for IPv6 
development and testing: 3 networks, 2 Linux machines as routers, 6 
Linux machines as regular guests, 1 Linux machine as a web server, 3 MS 
Windows 7 machines. All virtual in one box under kvm, And an extra 
ethernet card to plug in non-virtual hardware. (I didn't get the 
setup/registering of the MS Windows machines completely automated yet, 
but that is an MS Windows issue.)

I found libvirt and virsh pretty nice. It took some time and learning to 
build this, but much of that was learning about IPv6 and filling holes 
in my IPv4 knowledge, kvm itself was pretty cooperative. No, it wasn't 
easy as using the GUI to set up Virtualbox, but I have a reproducible 
design: run the scripts on another host and the same configuration will 
be created. Edit the configuration file and (at least some) 
customizations are way easy--and again reproducible.

Nice to know kvm isn't going away on the whim of the management of some 
private company.


-kb