Virtual PC/Server or VMware

-EOS-

I'm about to start my studying for the 70-290 exam and will be setting up a virtual network to play and learn on.

From your experiences, would you recommend using one of Microsoft's Virtual products, or VMWare?

alharland

I have not used MS Virtual PC, so I can't comment on that product. I do, however, actively use WMware for my training lab and find it to be an excellent product. And whats more, it's free. I currently have 3 servers and 2 clients running with no problems at all. You will need plenty of RAM though. I have 2Gb which seems to be more than enough for now.

I would certainly recommend VMware to others to use in their training labs.

BF2Mad

I have not used virtual server but I have used Vmware for every exam in some way or another, works excelllent!

I also have 2Gb of RAM which does the job for a home VMWare lab you could get away with 1GB if needed.

Everlife

I haven't used VMWare, but I do have my lab network setup within Virtual Server. It's worked great for me so far!

mzgavc

I use VPC at work to test drive database releases. I also use VPC at home to help study for the 70-291 exam.

VPC seems to work just fine and I have no qualms with it, but I do find it to be bulky to use at times, and can be fairly resource intensive. You can scale back the amount of RAM that each VPC uses but at a cost of performance.

VPC on my office computer with 512mb of ram runs alright. There are some spotty performance times depending on what I'm doing. Mostly I allocate about 128mb to a VPC at any time, and I have had 2 run at the same time without much issue at all other then it being slow. *By issues I mean crashes or program hangings* On my machine at home its a dual proc machine with a hefty amount of ram. I can run an entire 2 DC domain + a test version of XP just using the RAM installed, and some work with processor affinity.

VPC is also free to legit XP users.

One of the things you need to do is install the addons pack for VPC. It removes some of the annoying aspects of VPC such as mouse release issues.

Unfortunately I haven't used VMware yet, but I have the ubuntu Linux install on my desk for when I do try it out.

From what I read they're both great programs, and ultimately its up to personal preference...

The ESX version of VMware seems to be the VM du jour and most companies use it for their virtualization needs based on a very small kernel to run the VM machines.

I'm no VMware pro, so mebbe someone else can elaborate for me.

I guess try both out, experience is never a bad thing

Gundamtdk

I have used VMWare, VPC, and Virtual Server.

Virtual PC has a easy to use interface, but it lacks features like SCSI drives.

Virtual Server has more features than Virtual PC but the interface is not as good.

VMWare has a lot of features and easy to use.

I would recommend VMWare but I don't it's free.