Poll of sorts-

Jason Lasker lasker at eng.buffalo.edu
Thu Mar 10 16:09:23 EST 2005


In our experience VWware is a good solution for individual user workstations
with at least 1GB of RAM that need to run high performance applications.
When you start to deploy it on a larger scale (ex in labs) it becomes
problematic:

1.  The don't use floating licenses.  This is a problem because each user
must have the license code in their home directory.
2.  Difficult to lock down, users can modify the VM and the environment.
3.  If you use snap shots to protect the disk image performance goes down.
4.  The license file is stored in plain text.
5.  Unless you buy at least 50 licenses you get individual codes for each
workstation.

How we got around it.  We run VMware in 5 labs (about 150 machines).
1. Custom scripts to install the .vmware directory and virtual machine
configs to each user when they fire up the app.
2. Lock down the XP environment with VMWare to reduce the ability to change
it. 
3. Put the VM disk file on a partition with limited space and limit the size
of /tmp to reduce people ability to create own VMs

Funny thing about this is the Windows Host version of the software is much
more advanced as far as locking people out of the configuration options.

We have talked to VMware about these issues but they did not seem care about
it.  They are much more fused on their higher end server virtualization
products.

If you are just running basic applications like office and not higher end
science and engineering stuff like AutoCAD, then a better solution as far as
manageability is Terminal/Citrix server.

Vmware Academic costs about $125/per seat with $25/year maintenance, you
also need a license for the version of the OS (and the software on it) you
are running in your virtual machine.  So you don't get something for nothing
here....

I am not bashing Vmware... I think it is a good product when used in the
right situation... it just doesn't scale well... That's where Terminal
Server/Citrix works well.

In an environment where budgets are tight you are better off looking for
cheaper GNU alternatives like OpenOffice etc....


Your mileage may vary.....

Jason Lasker
Senior Programmer Analyst/Systems Administrator 
University at Buffalo Science and Engineering Node Services
113 Bell Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-2050
Voice 716-645-3797 x2172
Fax    716-645-3704
email mailto:lasker at eng.buffalo.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org] On Behalf Of
Cyber Source
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 3:33 PM
To: nflug at nflug.org
Subject: Re: Poll of sorts-

Eric wrote:

> I work at a small high school where they could not afford many MS 
> products or user licenses for e-mail and other server/client users, so 
> I have constructed some linux servers for them.  ...I should actually 
> be more precise in saying I use a great deal of GNU apps on top of linux.
>
> I believe I may, in the future, have to put linux as a desktop here 
> ...just wish "wine" was more advanced.
>
>
> anthonyriga wrote:
>
>> When was working for Advance 2000 we were pushing linux on the 
>> backend for our clients. Testing stuff on the Desktop too. Most of us 
>> ran it on our laptops. We also ran all of our DNS at Advance too on 
>> Linux. Our Alkatel phone systems routers were also Linux based..
>> My girlfriend works for Center for Plastic surgery and the are runing 
>> Medent on Win XP boxes and Redhat Adv server on the backend. They 
>> moved most of their data
>> which needs to be hippa comliant off SCO to Linux..   --- Darin 
>> Perusich <Darin.Perusich at cognigencorp.com>
>> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> we use linux for about 90% of our infratructure at cognigen with the 
>>> exception of a few services like nfs/smb, NIS+, oracle, X Logins, 
>>> some statistical apps, and 25 node compute cluster. these are 
>>> currently on solaris but i'll be moving oracle, and the cluster to 
>>> linux by summer, NIS+ to eDirectory on linux by the end of the year 
>>> hopefully.
>>>
>>> Dennis Ruzeski wrote:
>>>   
>>>
>>>> I'm curious about something--
>>>>
>>>> How do you all use Linux? Are there many people on
>>>>     
>>>
>>> the list that use
>>>   
>>>
>>>> it in a corporate/enterprise environment or is it
>>>>     
>>>
>>> more for
>>>   
>>>
>>>> desktop/home use?
>>>>
>>>> I've only been to a couple of meetings, but they
>>>>     
>>>
>>> seem to center more
>>>   
>>>
>>>> around 'Linux as a Windows desktop replacement',
>>>>     
>>>
>>> which is great since
>>>   
>>>
>>>> Windows sucks, but I'd like to see more meeting
>>>>     
>>>
>>> topics revolving
>>>   
>>>
>>>> around things like high-volume system
>>>>     
>>>
>>> administration, tuning for
>>>   
>>>
>>>> performance and uptime, and Linux in the
>>>>     
>>>
>>> enterprise. Anybody else
>>>   
>>>
>>>> that would like to do things like this?
>>>>
>>>> --Dennis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>
>>> --
>>> Darin Perusich
>>> Unix Systems Administrator
>>> Cognigen Corp.
>>> darinper at cognigencorp.com
>>>
>>>   
>>
>>
>> __________________________________________________
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>> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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>>  
>>
If you need "wine" stuff, try VMware, it's worth every penny if your stuck
in M$ stuff.

--
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