Re: [Xen-users] Xen and VMWare Server co-existing?

[Henning Sprang <henning_sprang@xxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 11:58 +1300, Steven Ellis wrote:
> Not that VMWare have released VMWare Server as a free product i'm
> interested in using it where my hardware isn't VT enabled to run
> non-linux environments. Ideally I'd like to run it on the Xen Dom0
> environment so that I can run a mixture of Linux DomU and Windows VMWare
> instances.
> 
> Any ideas if this is feasible, and which version of Xen I should be
> considering. At present i'm using a Xen 2.0.7 environment.

In my opinion, there's a big difference between "free" as 
VMWare Server and Player and free as GPL free, and this is not just a
political difference, this can and will affect real life usage.
but this has to be discussed elsewhere.

For the feasibility, it depends on the technology VMWare Server is
using. If it's a hypervisor, like xen, then I am quite sure they won't
run at the same time on the same machine.

The hypervisor sits on a level between the hardware and the actual OS
you are running as dom0 - so there can be only one at the time.
In case VMware server is "just" a userland/kernel level Software, it
should theoretically be possible to run it at the same time. This is
true for VMWare Workstation. I think that only VMWare ESX Server is a
hypervisor, while the others are userland/kernel level - you have to
check that yourself. At least you will have some kernel compiling fun,
as VMWare needs special modules.
It's hard to predict how the VMWare Technology affects Performance and
how well it would work together with a xen dom0.

Another way to get your Windows VM's is trying to use Hardware
Virtualisation, as soon as it's available and working.

Henning




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