VMware Server 2.0 RC 1

on July 24, 2008 at 10:00 am by Jon

After updating the kernel on my Fedora 8 box, I was greeting by VMware Server failing to load. I figured now would be a good time to try out 2.0 RC 1. I had read that it was a fair bit different and that they had done away with the console client in favor of a web based client so I was interested in seeing if there were any major new features. After downloading the 1.0.5 tarball (again) to get and run the uninstall script (which does not delete your virtual machines) I was ready to go.

Installation
I decided to try the rpm as I had been told it had caused problems for a friend of mine and I wanted to give it a shot myself. It worked flawlessly for me. I opened up ports 80 and 443 on the firewall, fired up Firefox 3 on my Windows XP box, and pointed it to the Fedora box. I was greeted by the log in screen, so far, so good.

Web UI

VMware 2.0 Web UI
Upon logging in, I noticed the first issue. The Web UI is dog slow. Additionally, there are no right-click menus present. Evidence of VMware’s statement that VMware server is a free way to spread usage of ESX Server is seen when the UI finally loads. Stats like CPU usage, memory usage, available space on datastores are now available. My existing Virtual Machines where recognized and added to the inventory automatically. I decided to fire up an XP VM and try out the console.

An extension is required load the console. I installed the extension (12mb) and restarted Firefox, only to find out that it is automatically disabled Firefox. I decided to try out Firefox 2 and IE7 only to receive an error message rather than a prompt to install any add-ons. Hmm… After doing a little research I found the answer on a few sites. Add a boolean value to Firefox’s “about:config” called “extensions.checkCompatibility” that is set to “false”. Restarting Firefox again I was finally ready to try the console. With 2.0 the console doesn’t seem to be able to be loaded within the client as was possible using the console client with previous versions of VMware Server. When you click on the console a new window is opened. At first I was getting errors about the server timing out and I discovered another port needed opened, namely 902 (dependent on install options). Once I got all this straight the console opened right up.

Console

VMware 2.0 Console
Unlike the Web UI, the console is snappy. Additionally, I no longer experienced the typing glitch I sometimes did using the old console client (The one where you would type “The dog ran” and “Thhhhheeeee doooooooggggg rrrrannn” would show up). The UI closely resembles the VMware Player.

Creating a VM
I wanted to set up an SSH server to access from work, so I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu 8.04 Server. Creating a VM in 2.0 is sort of a hybrid of how creation works in 1.0 and in ESX server. One thing that really caused me a lot of problems was mounting an .iso image as the CD-ROM. The “browse” GUI would repeatedly fail to load the contents of the datastore. After a number of attempts it finally loaded and I got on with the show. As expected the console was snappy.

Performance
As you can see from the screen shots I’m not running on the strongest system in the world. A P4 2.53 with a gig of ram was the test bed. Despite this, the performance while running the Ubuntu server and XP vm’s was decent. At least on par with what I expected from use of previous versions of VMware Server. Additionally, even during the long load times and (fake) timeouts of the Web UI, the console and remote connectivity did not seem to be sluggish or interrupted. The SSH server was available all of the next day from work as well, and tunneling web traffic seemed reasonably fast (if anything, faster than the web proxy provided by my workplace).

Problems
Throughout using the Web UI I repeatedly received “the server has timed out” type messages after long hangs, but then it would load after I clicked “ok” on the errors. Sometimes parts of the UI would just hang at “Loading…” It was hard to determine if it was just slow to load, or it actually wasn’t going to load. Refreshing the page would normally get the missing elements to eventually load.

Conclusion
I actually like the new interface. If only it was much faster it would be very nice. The performance is somewhere between “not acceptable” and “just enough to use it” depending on what it feels like doing at the given moment. The really needs to be improved before the final release. No right-clicking is a bit of an annoyance, but overall, it is an upgrade in terms of features and appearance. The hassle of getting the console plug-in to work will hopefully not be present in the final version. Overall, I’d say the hassle of the Web UI is probably worth being able to type properly in the console.