VMWare Server 2 sucks big-time. Who the hell thought to make it so relient on Java?

There seems to be a memory leak or something. I checked my server after a night of leaving my VM running (which I could not even access thanks to the web UI console errors!) and my server was running slow as a boulder…

I got 2.0 installed and the first bit of trouble I had was I couldn’t remember what the username and password I had setup on the old version. I had to Google for the default user and password for VM Server 2.0 just to find out that I had to use a user that was setup on the host machine, and to me that’s a fail. This caused me to uninstall and re-install thinking that I missed something during the install routine about setting the password.

The second problem I had is when I tried to upgrade the virtual hardware version on some of the old VM’s. had one using version 3 and one user version 4, both did not want to upgrade. he’s a tip, you can upgrade them by removing them from the list of VM’s but don’t delete the disk file, just delete everything in it’s folder except that and start up a new machine and tell it to use that disk file, this will “upgrade” the machine.

There are lot of things I don’t like about VMware server 2.0, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate them, but if it’s a really crappy product, my opinion will change. The first trouble was that I didn’t understand was having to setup a data store. all of a sudden I can’t just browse the folders on the hard drive to start up a new system or find an ISO image to install from, WTF? I also had to change the directory of the default data store, and then setup another one to give me access to my ISO images. the problem with this is that if I make a mistake I’m creating machines in the wrong folder, which means I have to start over. the second thing is that the web interface is soooo damn slow, all the refreshing and when I click on something it takes a good 2 or 3 seconds for it to respond. I feel like I’m running on a 500mhz system when I got a 3ghz system. and the last thing I want to do is have my browser open AND all the machines open in separate windows (although just now thinking about it, I have multiple monitors and can now have different machines on different monitors). I guess I can just use the shortcuts that can be created through the web interface.

There is at least one bright side to the web interface. You no longer have to go around installing the vmware console or a version of server on everyone’s machine to get to the machines, which alleviates at least one IT admin problem, deployment.

As for the use of tomcat6.exe. While it sucks that it’s >95 megs of system ram, I understand that they had to use something that would allow OS system calls to access HD, and serve up html, IIS with MySQL and PHP runs around 75 megs of ram so the difference is minimal IMHO since it’s only 20 megs apart and that’s only on my server with is used for development. They could have provided instructions on installing PHP and Mysql in IIS or Apache to accomplish the same goal. VMWare server shouldn’t be used by some shmo on windows xp unless that shmo understands how to install Personal Web Server or Apache with php and mysql. So making VMWare Server a stand alone product (at least for windows) shouldn’t have come about. Require people to use real server software for a proper host OS. After all getting Apche on linux is easy with all the install utilities that are out there.

I can’t but think that they are trying to kill off this product since it’s usability went down the drain.

Pros:
- The web gui look is nice. That’s how I found this
post, trying to see how they built it.
- I’m running 10 vms with no problems.

Non-issues:
- The size of the download. I’ve got AT&T fiber at my house so size is not an issues.