[BNM] Virtual machines for testing

[Quentin North (noisy)]

Alex,

I use VMWare ESX and Virtual Center to manage, but this is not a  
cheap option. If you want to do it on the cheap I would use VMWare  
Server (freeware), VMConsole (which comes with VMWare server) all  
running on Linux or Windows 64bit box which you can vnc/rdp to. You  
could then rdp to Windows box, use local VMConsole to start up one or  
more VMs and then use the console to access. Alternatively rdp/vnc to  
the VMs themselves once up.

If you want to go for VM ESX, with V Center, the recommended way is  
to run VCenter as a VM on the ESX box that you are managing. Virual  
Center allows you to manage all your VMs from one console remotely.  
This also provides VMotion so that you can move running VMs  
(including VCenter) about different physical machines (need gigabit  
interconnect) according to resource requirements and also do high  
availability. Im using ESX as a platform for large scale enterprise  
systems currently and it works just fine. Need a new test/dev server?  
I can just pop one into existence all started up and ready to use in  
about 10 mins.

HTH

Q