VM Workstation or GSX Server?

[Ben]

Hi,

We're looking at setting up an App server, that will act as a development
machine, running a lot of IBM software i.e. websphere, message broker etc. I
was thinking of putting VM Workstation on and setting up each machine with
terminal services so each of our developers could connect and 'tinker'.
However after talking to one of the developers I'm not so sure this setup
will work, even though they would both get separate desktops, and be able to
run certain programs separately, it still means that if 2 of them connect to
the same machine at once, and start tinkering with the services, it's going
to affect what the other sees.
Would GSX server get around this problem? Does it create each session with
separate services? If not, is there a piece of software that can? Or am I
looking at this the wrong way, rather than offering TS to the VM machines
themselves, should I just offer TS to the base app server, and create
separate VM machines for each user so they can start them up individually?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Ben

[Clay Calvert]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 07:49:29 +0000 (UTC), "Ben"
<bjbla...@xyz.hotmail.com> wrote:

>themselves, should I just offer TS to the base app server, and create
>separate VM machines for each user so they can start them up individually?

I support 20 developers that use VmWare. We orignially bought 20
copies of Workstation and 2 GSX licenses. Now, 3 years later, nobody
uses workstation anymore. GSX is sooo much nicer. We bought 2 more
GSX licenses and servers with 32GB of RAM.

I give them clones of production servers converted to VmWare, or of
new OSes/configurations that we will use in production. I rename the
VM by appending a "VM00" on the end of the existing server name. This
VM gets stored in a location that only my team and the CM manager has
access to. A developer will ask for a copy of the image and then the
server name gets incremented, so "ServerVM01" will go to the first
developer, etc.

The developers have TS access to the "development" GSX servers, but
not the "testing" GSX servers. They usually TS into the server to get
the VM initially configured and started, but then use Terminal
Services to get into the VMs, or VmWare's Remote Console for the few
NT VMs that we still have.

Clay Calvert
CCal...@Wanguru.com
Replace "W" with "L"

[Ben]

Hi Clay,

Thanks for the reply, I will look into GSX more.

Cheers

Ben
"Clay Calvert" <ccal...@Wanguru.com> wrote in message
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