I've run some test environments in Fusion (which is Workstation for Mac) and it works well, but remember that you don't get a large number of useful features you would have in vSphere / ESXi like the ability to migrate between hosts, advanced networking, etc. It's fine for managing a handful of machines if you don't need to worry about them being available for use 24x7. If you want a "cheap" (at least in initial purchase) way into virtualization, you may want to look at using Hyper-V with Server 2008 or 2008R2 – it's reasonably quick and works pretty well with Windows guests. Definitely not as capable as vSphere but it's included with your existing Windows licenses at least.

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Jack Kramer
Manager of Information Technology
University Relations, Michigan State University
w: 517-884-1231 / c: 248-635-4955

From: Oscar Castaneda <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Oscar Castaneda <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 11:17:18 -0500
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [MSUNAG] VMware

In an effort to simplify some complicated scenarios, we want to start to

use VMware.

It goes a little like a blind exercise because we have only some basic

understanding of how it works: we created a few virtual machines using

VM Player, and I had been reading all I can find about it.

I am considering now moving things one notch up. Since most of the

VMware products are still apparently high priced, I thought that I would

like to start using VMware Workstation to manage my few existent virtual

machines and see what I can do with it so perhaps down the road I can

sell the idea to my management.

Who has experience with VMware software? Does it make sense to get

Workstation and start using it? Did you buy the big software pieces? any

words of wise advise?

oscar

Oscar Castañeda

Global Observatory for Ecosystem Services

Michigan State University