In our September issue, we had done a story on 'Server
Consolidation and Virtualization' and covered all the available virtualization
technologies. We also implemented a few popular virtualization solutions, both
free and commercial and discussed the benefits you can derive by virtualizing
servers in your organization. To extend that a little further, we show you a way
of emulating virtual machines without investing in software. VMWare Player is a
free application from VMWare that runs a virtual machine using images created
with VMWare Workstation and the GSX and ESX Server editions of VMWare. In
addition, you can also run virtual hosts created for Microsoft Virtual PC and
Symantec LiveState Recovery System. All you need are these pre-created virtual
machines, in the form of the virtual hard disk image and the relevant
configuration files.
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It's very useful for organizations that require multiple
test platforms. Virtual machines cut the installation time and save on cost for
buying additional hardware. Not only this, you can have pre-configured VMs and
allocate them to host services on the Internet, whenever required. So
before using the VMWare Player, you need to create virtual machines that you
need on your setup using one of VMWare Workstation, GSX Server, ESX Server and
Microsoft Virtual PC. Once you have created the virtual machines, copy their
virtual disk and configuration files on a DVD or network server, where you have
plenty of space. After this you need the VMWare Player to run those stored
virtual machines.
VMWare Player for If you are Linux user
Replace the
This will configure |
Features
Coming to its features, the VMWare Player can connect and
disconnect any pre-configured devices in the VM. You can change the amount of
memory allocated to the VM by clicking on the menu option Player>TroubleShoot>Change
Memory Allocation. The Player also lets you to set the type of network
connection for your VM in one of three modes: bridged, host-only, or NAT. In
addition, the player allows you to seamlessly copy and paste objects from the
virtual machine to the host and vice-versa. To use this feature, you must have
the 'VMWare Tools' installed. The Player can run on 64-bit host
OSs
. VMWare Player ensures that VMs run safely isolated from the host machine
making use of the hardware-level security and fault isolation of the
virtualization solutions.
Using VMWare Player
Launch the VMWare Player from Start>Programs>VMWare. Select the
configuration file of the VM that you want to run. Select the configuration
file. It should be one of VMX, VMC or SV2I extension files. VMX files represent
VMWare machines, VMCs are MS
Virtual PC images and SV2I extension for Symantec LiveState Recovery System
images. Once the configuration file gets loaded in the player, its starts the VM
and you can work on it without even knowing that you are on a virtual machine.
Suppose you don't have any virtual machine ready and you want to test
something on Linux OS, you can the download pre-configured virtual machines
image file from the VMWare website. The site has links of virtual machine images
created by vendors such as IBM, Novell and MySQL.
Sanjay Majumder