VMware Workstation for Windows
After getting my feet wet with VMware Workstation 2.0 for Linux, I tested VMware 2.0 for Windows NT and Windows 2000. I created several VMs: one for Win2K, one for Windows 98 Second Edition (Win98SE), and one for Red Hat Linux. (You might think it odd to run Win2K on top of Win2K, but doing so is useful for tasks such as testing different language versions or different service packs.)
Although installation of each guest OS went smoothly, the VMware Workstation documentation surprisingly makes no mention of how to let a Linux guest OS access the Windows host. (I used the Linux Smbmount command.) I noticed a severe performance drop with Win98SE, which took nearly 90 minutes to install. A VMware spokesman confirmed that, as I had thought, this tedious installation was due to the thunking that VMware's 32-bit code needs to do to support Win98SE's 16-bit legacy code.
VMware Workstation 2.0 for Windows NT and Windows 2000 lets you change the process priority from normal (the default) to idle or high for each VM independently or for all VMs and for normal operations, background operations, or both. I used BAPCo's SYSmark 2000 office productivity suite to look at the performance effect of different priorities on one VM on a quiet system. I found that the performance of Corel's CorelDRAW 9 Graphics Suite improved dramatically when I set the VM to a higher priority. Microsoft Excel 2000's performance actually decreased quite a bit when I boosted the VM's priority, and Netscape Communicator's performance stayed about the same, regardless of the VM's priority. The only conclusion I drew from my quick tests is that your mileage might vary.
Some Useful Features
VMware Workstation for Windows NT and Windows 2000 and VMware Workstation for Linux share some useful features that help make this solid program even more attractive. In addition to supporting Clipboard functions between guest OSs, the product supports bidirectional Clipboard functions between the guest and host OSs. A mouse click lets you run a VM in full-screen mode.
VMware Workstation's Suspend feature lets you quickly save the state of any VM to disk and reduces machine reactivation time to a few seconds from almost 1.5 minutes without the Suspend feature. You can use this feature in combination with VMware Workstation's Instant Restore feature to store many different VMs on disk while allowing for quick transitions from one to another. The Suspend feature can work with (but doesn't require) an Advanced Power Management (APM)-capable OS.
One of VMware's best tricks has to do with the special disk modes it presents to the guest OS. In Persistent mode (the default mode), each virtual disk acts like a standard hard disk. But the Nonpersistent mode, which you use the Configuration Editor to enable, as Figure 2 shows, lets you do some otherwise dreadful things to the VM with no dire consequences. For example, I deleted the entire Windows directory from my Win98SE VM. Then, I shut down and restarted the guest OS. Instead of the catastrophic failure that you'd expect under these circumstances, the VM booted as usual. Nonpersistent mode is handy in testing labs or training facilities or when you're trying to debug a new program or DLL. If you crash a test system, you can simply reboot, and within seconds you'll be back where you started.
Like a journaling file system, Undoable disk mode logs all changes to a file, but this mode lets the user decide whether to commit disk changes. VMware Workstation writes changes for the current VM session to a redo log file. Upon shutdown, VMware Workstation asks you whether to commit, discard, or keep the changes. The next time you activate that VM, VMware Workstation prompts you again to commit, discard, append, or cancel the changes to the redo file. You can change a VM's disk mode at any time as long as the VM is powered off.
If you need another computer system or two to do your job and don't have the room or the money for a new PC, consider one of these VMware Workstation products. VMware Workstation will change your notion of what a single desktop system can do.
End of Article
)
2GB size limit for virtual disks was removed in 4th version. Only 2Gb limit for VMs RAM is still here...
Tricker December 02, 2003