[BNM] Virtual machines for testing

[Quentin North (noisy)]

Hi

Saw Paul's suggestion of using M$ Virtual PC. Fine, but it does not  
work well with RHEL or CentOS to my certain knowledge (I couldnt get  
CenOS to install using Virtual PC). I would go with VMWare Server  
(which is the free one).  Contrary to what others say ESX, which is  
part of VI3, is not free. ESX is a bare iron VM solution for  
datacenters. Also, it doesnt come with a stripped down RH, just the  
base ESX management console is in RH, to do anything nice with it  
like VMotion you need Virtual Center.

Citrix Xen is also rated, but I have less knowledge of this as never  
used in anger. It has the technical advantage of using the  
virtualisation extensions that are now available in some Intel  
chipsets. M$ Virtual Server (in beta) also supports this. VMWare  
doesnt yet.

HTH