On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Tony Mountifield <tony at softins.co.uk> wrote: >> And another problem: why do you use vmware server?? It is EOL and not >> supported for vmware anymore. > > Mainly because it's a test system at home on which I've had VMware server > installed for a couple of years already, and have had no reason to change > (perhaps until now). It was free at the time. I haven't investigated the > cost of ESXi. If I were to move to that, could I use my existing virtual > machines unchanged? > ESXi is free (unless that is changed in 5.x), you just don't get any of the clustering and multiple server management capabilities of the paid version. You do have to run it directly on the host which has to support hardware virtualization. Most recent processors do, but check for vmx or svm in the flags in /pro/cpuinfo. You need a windows box to run the console, but it doesn't have to stay connected all the time. And there is a free converter program to move the images (or physical hosts) to guests under ESXi, but if you use the same machine you'll have to copy them off somewhere first. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com