VMWARE Workstation

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS ....2 INTRODUCTION....................................................................3 HISTORY...............................................................................4 History of Virtualization........................................................7 In the Beginning: Mainframe Virtualization..............................7 The Need for x86 Virtualization.............................................7 The VMware Solution: Full Virtualization of x86 Hardware.........9 BASIC OF VIRTUALIZATION..................................................9 What is Virtualization?..........................................................9 How Does Virtualization Work?............................................10 CORE PRODUCT DESIGN...................................................11 BENIFITS OF VIRTUALIZATION..........................................13 Why Your Company Should Virtualize...................................13 Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Virtualization Software.....................13 INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL MACHINE..............................14 What is a VMWare Virtual Machine?......................................14 I/O Access........................................................................16 VMware ACE......................................................................21 VMWARE PRODUCTS ..........................................................22 Server Virtualization Product ..............................................22 Desktop Virtualization Product ............................................23 HOST SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS...........................................23 Like physical computers, the virtual machines running under Workstation perform better if they have faster processors and more memory....................................................................23 The terms host and guest describe physical and virtual machines:..........................................................................23 Host The physical computer on which you install the Workstation software is called the host computer, and its operating system is the host operating system.......................23 Guest The operating system running inside a virtual machine is called a guest operating system. ......................................23 Memory............................................................................24 Display.............................................................................25 Disk Drives.......................................................................25 Hard Disks........................................................................25 Optical CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drives........................................26 Floppy Drives....................................................................26 Local Area Networking........................................................26 INSTALLATION PREREQUISITES.........................................26 CREATING AND UPGRADING A VIRTUAL MACHINE.............28 CONFIGURATION OPTIONS FOR THE NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE WIZARD..............................................................29 Guest Operating System Selection.......................................33 SETTING UP A NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE .............................33 PRODUCT BENEFITS............................................................34 2

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Binary Translation..............................................................35 THIRD PARTY RESOURCES..................................................37 Ready-to-use virtual machines............................................37 Advantages.......................................................................38 Disadvantages...................................................................38 CONCLUSION......................................................................38 BIBLOGRAPHY ...................................................................39

INTRODUCTION

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) is the marketshare leader in virtualization software. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Palo Alto, California. The Company is majority owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). The name "VMware" comes from the acronym "VM", meaning "virtual machine", combined with ware from the second part of "software". VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. VMware's enterprise software, VMware ESX Server, runs directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system. This is known as being platform- or hardware-agnostic. Virtualization is a technology that many engineers are evaluating with the goals of lowering cost, reducing footprint, and creating better integrated systems. In order to make informed decisions on the use of virtualization in measurement and automation applications, it is important to understand the basic virtualization architectures available and the technologies that make them work behind the scenes. This paper will present an overview of this information and help readers form a virtualization plan for their engineering systems.
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It is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of virtualization technology and its benefits.

HISTORY

In 1998 VMware was founded by Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion. Greene and Rosenblum, who are married, first met while at the University of California, Berkeley.[5] Edouard Bugnion remained the chief architect and CTO of VMware until 2005,[6] and went on to found Nuova Systems (now part of Cisco). VMware developed a range of products, most notable of which are their hypervisors. VMware became well known for their first type 2 hypervisor known as GSX. This product has since evolved into two hypervisor products lines, VMware's type 1 hypervisors running directly on hardware, along with their hosted type 2 hypervisors. The company has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, United States, and established an R&D Center in
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Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as one at the Time Warner Center in New York City, in 2005. VMware operated throughout 1998 in stealth mode with roughly 20 employees by the end of that year. The company was launched officially in February 1999 at the DEMO Conference organized by Chris Shipley.[7] VMware delivered its first product, VMware Workstation, in May 1999[8] and entered the server market in 2001 with VMware GSX Server (hosted) and VMware ESX Server (hostless).[9] In 2003 VMware launched VMware Virtual Center, the VMotion and Virtual SMP technology. 64-bit support appeared in 2004. The company was also acquired by EMC Corporation that same year for $625 million.[10] In June 2006, VMware acquired privately-held Akimbi Systems.[11] In August 2007, EMC Corporation released 10% of the company's shares in VMware in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock debuted at US$29 per share and closed the day at $51.[12] On July 8, 2008, VMware co-founder, president and CEO Diane Greene was unexpectedly fired by the VMware Board of Directors and replaced by Paul Maritz, a retired 14-year Microsoft veteran who was heading EMC's cloud computing business unit.[13] In the same news release VMware stated that 2008 revenue growth will be "modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007." As a result, market price of VMware dropped nearly 25%. Then on September 10, 2008, Rosenblum, the company's chief scientist, resigned. On September 16, 2008, VMware announced that they are collaborating with Cisco to provide joint data center
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solutions. One of the first results of this is the Cisco Nexus 1000V, a distributed virtual software switch that will be an integrated option in the VMware infrastructure.[14] VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, a company with core expertise in 3D graphics driver development on November 26, 2008.[15] On August 10, 2009, VMware announced the acquisition of SpringSource, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management.[16] The acquisition is seen by the industry as a strategic move of VMware to become a leader in offering platform as a service (PaaS). The acquisition also resulted in the expansion of VMware's education services portfolio and by its the inclusion of SpringSource University authorized training

partner, SpringPeople Technologies. On January 12, 2010, VMware acquired Zimbra, an opensource collaboration software tool, from Yahoo. On May 6, 2010, VMware acquired GemStone, to be operated under VMware's SpringSource division. On 12 April 2011, they released an open source platform-asa-service system called Cloud Foundry, and a hosted version of the service. This supports application deployment for Java, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node.js and support for MySQL, MongoDB and Redis.[17] One 26 April 2011, VMware acquired SlideRocket a startup which developed a SaaS application for building business presentations that are stored online. Through a Web-based interface, users can handle all parts of the process, from designing slides and compiling content, to reviewing documents and publishing and delivering them

On 31 May 2011, VMware acquired Socialcast, a group workstream service.

History of Virtualization
Virtualization was first developed in the 1960s to partition large, mainframe hardware for better hardware utilization. Today, computers based on x86 architecture are faced with the same problems of rigidity and underutilization that mainframes faced in the 1960s. VMware invented virtualization for the x86 platform in the 1990s to address underutilization and other issues, overcoming many challenges in the process. Today, VMware is the global leader in x86 virtualization, with over 130,000 customers, including 100% of the Fortune 100.

In the Beginning: Mainframe Virtualization

Virtualization was first implemented more than 30 years ago by IBM as a way to logically partition mainframe computers into separate virtual machines. These partitions allowed mainframes to multitask: run multiple applications and processes at the same time. Since mainframes were expensive resources at the time, they were designed for partitioning as a way to fully leverage the investment.

The Need for x86 Virtualization

Virtualization was effectively abandoned during the 1980s and 1990s when client-server applications and inexpensive x86 servers and desktops led to distributed computing. The broad adoption of Windows and the emergence of Linux as server operating systems in the 1990s established x86 servers as the industry standard. The growth in x86 server
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and desktop deployments led to new IT infrastructure and operational challenges. These challenges include: Low Infrastructure Utilization. Typical x86 server deployments achieve an average utilization of only 10% to 15% of total capacity, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research firm. Organizations typically run one application per server to avoid the risk of vulnerabilities in one application affecting the availability of another application on the same server. Increasing Physical have Infrastructure steadily Costs. The Most operational costs to support growing physical infrastructure increased. computing infrastructure must remain operational at all times, resulting in power consumption, cooling and facilities costs that do not vary with utilization levels. Increasing IT Management Costs. As computing environments become more complex, the level of specialized education and experience required for infrastructure management personnel and the associated costs of such personnel have increased. Organizations spend disproportionate time and resources on manual tasks associated with server maintenance, and thus require more personnel to complete these tasks. Insufficient downtime Failover of critical and Disaster Protection. and Organizations are increasingly affected by the server applications inaccessibility of
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 critical end user desktops. The threat of security attacks, natural disasters, health pandemics and terrorism has elevated the importance of business continuity planning for both desktops and servers. High Maintenance end-user desktops. Managing and securing enterprise desktops present numerous challenges. Controlling a distributed desktop environment and enforcing management, access and security policies without impairing users ability to work effectively is complex and expensive. Numerous patches and upgrades must be continually applied to desktop environments to eliminate security vulnerabilities.

The VMware Solution: Full Virtualization of x86 Hardware

In 1999, VMware introduced virtualization to x86 systems to address many of these challenges and transform x86 systems into a general purpose, shared hardware infrastructure that offers full isolation, mobility and operating system choice for application environments.

BASIC OF VIRTUALIZATION

What is Virtualization?
Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Todays powerful x86

computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing the resources of that single computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer. While others are leaping aboard the virtualization bandwagon now, VMware is the market leader in virtualization.

How Does Virtualization Work?

The VMware virtualization platform is built on a businessready architecture. Use software such as VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi (a free download) to transform or virtualize the hardware resources of an x86-based computerincluding the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controllerto create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a real computer. Each virtual machine contains a complete system, eliminating potential conflicts. VMware virtualization works by inserting a thin layer of software directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machine monitor or hypervisor that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other. By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, and network devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems,
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applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it needs them.

CORE PRODUCT DESIGN

VMware software provides a completely virtualized set of hardware to the guest operating system.[18] VMware software virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, a network adapter, and hard disk adapters. The host provides pass-through drivers for guest USB, serial, and parallel devices. In this way, VMware virtual machines become highly portable between computers, because every host looks nearly identical to the guest. In practice, a system administrator can pause operations on a virtual machine guest, move or copy that guest to another physical computer, and there resume execution exactly at the point of suspension. Alternatively, for enterprise servers, a feature called VMotion allows the migration of operational guest virtual machines between similar but separate hardware hosts sharing the same storage. Each of these transitions is completely transparent to any users on the virtual machine at the time it is being migrated. VMware Workstation, Server, and ESX take a more optimized path to running target operating systems on the host than emulators (such as Bochs) which simulate the function of each CPU instruction on the target machine oneby-one, or dynamic recompilation which compiles blocks of machine-instructions the first time they execute, and then uses the translated code directly when the code runs subsequently (Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac OS X takes this approach.) VMware software does not emulate an instruction set for different hardware not physically present. This significantly boosts performance,[19] but can cause problems when moving virtual machine guests between hardware hosts using different instruction-sets (such as found in 64-bit Intel and AMD CPUs), or between hardware hosts with a differing number of CPUs. Stopping the virtual-machine guest before moving it to a different CPU type generally causes no issues.
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VMware's products predate the virtualization extensions to the x86 instruction set, and do not require virtualizationenabled processors. On such older processors, they use the CPU to run code directly whenever possible (as, for example, when running user-mode and virtual 8086 mode code on x86). When direct execution cannot operate, such as with kernel-level andreal-mode code, VMware products re-write the code dynamically, a process VMware calls "binary translation" or BT. The translated code gets stored in spare memory, typically at the end of the address space, which segmentation mechanisms can protect and make invisible. For these reasons, VMware operates dramatically faster than emulators, running at more than 80% of the speed that the virtual guest operating-system would run directly on the same hardware. In one study VMware claims a slowdown over native ranging from 06 percent for the VMware ESX Server.[20] VMware's approach avoids some of the difficulties of virtualization on x86-based platforms. Virtual machines may deal with offending instructions by replacing them, or by simply running kernel-code in user-mode. Replacing instructions runs the risk that the code may fail to find the expected content if it reads itself; one cannot protect code against reading while allowing normal execution, and replacing in-place becomes complicated. Running the code unmodified in user-mode will also fail, as most instructions which just read the machine-state do not cause an exception and will betray the real state of the program, and certain instructions silently change behavior in user-mode. One must always rewrite; performing a simulation of the current program counter in the original location when necessary and (notably) remapping hardware code breakpoints. Although VMware virtual machines run in user-mode, VMware Workstation itself requires the installation of various drivers in the host operating-system, notably to dynamically switch the Global Descriptor Table (GDT) and the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT). The VMware product line can also run different operating systems on a dual-boot system simultaneously by booting one partition natively while using the other as a guest within VMware Workstation.

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BENIFITS OF VIRTUALIZATION

Why Your Company Should Virtualize

Virtualizing your IT infrastructure lets you reduce IT costs while increasing the efficiency, utilization, and flexibility of your existing assets. Around the world, companies of every size benefit from VMware virtualization. Thousands of organizationsincluding all of the Fortune 100use VMware virtualization solutions. See how virtualizing 100% of your IT infrastructure will benefit your organization.
Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Virtualization Software 1.

Get more out of your existing resources: Pool common infrastructure resources and break the legacy one application to one server model with server consolidation. Reduce datacenter costs by reducing your physical infrastructure and improving your server to admin ratio: Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reduced real estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. Better management tools let you improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements are reduced as well. Increase availability of hardware applications and for improved business continuity: Securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately from unplanned issues. Gain operational flexibility: Respond to market changes with dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning and improved desktop and application deployment.

2.

3.

4.

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5.

Improve desktop manageability and security: Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.

INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL MACHINE

What is a VMWare Virtual Machine?

A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operatingsystems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own virtual (ie, software -based) CPU, RAM hard disk and network interface card (NIC). In this context, a VM is called a "guest" while the environment it runs within is called a "host." Virtual machines are often created to execute an instruction set different than that of the host environment. One host environment can often run multiple VMs at once. Because VMs are separated from the physical resources they use, the host environment is often able to dynamically assign those resources among them.

An operating system cant tell the difference between a virtual machine and a physical machine, nor can applications or other computers on a network. Even the
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virtual software

machine and

thinks contains

it no

is

real

computer. components

Nevertheless, a virtual machine is composed entirely of hardware whatsoever. As a result, virtual machines offer a number of distinct advantages over physical hardware. The phrase "virtual machine" is commonly used to describe Sun Microsystems' Java runtime environment, the Java virtual machine (JVM), in which Java-specific commands are interpreted. The JVM is a virtual machine in that it executes code compiled specifically for it known as bytecode and abstracts use of resources for this bytecode. The Java programming language does not rely on platformspecific instruction sets, such as APIs specific to any one operating system, to display output or access resources such as files. Instead, the JVM creates virtualized resources which the bytecode accesses. These actions are then passed on to the machine's actual resources. A user interacting with a virtualized server can view the server as a physical machine, in the sense that the user would see access to machines resources like hard disks, RAM, processors and Ethernet connections. In fact, all of these machine resources are virtual. For instance, instead of accessing a real hard disk, the user is accessing a construct of the host environment. This construct then accesses the real disk to record the data. "A running program is often referred to as a virtual machine - a machine that doesn't exist as a matter of actual physical reality. The virtual machine idea is itself one of the most elegant in the history of technology and is a crucial step in
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the evolution of ideas about software. To come up with it, scientists and technologists had to recognize that a computer running a program isn't merely a washer doing laundry. A washer is a washer whatever clothes you put inside, but when you put a new program in a computer, it becomes a new machine. . . The virtual machine: A way of understanding software that frees us to think of software design as machine design."

I/O Access
In the hosted virtualization architecture, each virtual machine (guest operating system) commonly only has access to a limited subset of I/O devices. The host operating system retains ownership of the physical I/O connected to a given computer, and the virtual machine monitor (VMM) provides an emulated view of the actual hardware (when possible) to each virtual machine (VM). Because the VMM does not have knowledge of most non-generic I/O devices such as PCI data acquisition cards, it does not present these
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emulated devices to VMs. Only generic devices like network interface cards and CD-ROM drives are emulated. In addition, many hosted virtualization solutions support passthrough functionality for the USB port. This feature allows users to access USB devices from individual VMs directly, providing for limited I/O capabilities beyond the emulated devices mentioned above. For example, it may be possible (using hosted virtualization software) to access NI USB data acquisition devices from a guest OS and acquire data. In actuality, several software components work together to make I/O possible in a hosted virtualization architecture. For example, the VMWare Workstation product directs I/O requests from virtual machines through a low-level VMM component, then through a driver, and finally to a user-level application component called VMApp. In the end, the VMApp component passes I/O requests through the host operating system. The key point to remember is that I/O requests are ultimately passed through the host OS in a hosted virtualization architecture. A diagram of this process is shown below.

Hosted virtual machine monitor (VMM) software is typically made up of different components that all

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communicate to channel virtual machine (VM) I/O requests through the host operating system (OS).
VIRTUAL MACHINES BENEFITS In general, VMware virtual machines possess four key characteristics that benefit the user:

Compatibility: Virtual machines are compatible with all standard x86 computers. Just like a physical computer, a virtual machine hosts its own guest operating system and applications, and has all the components found in a physical computer (motherboard, VGA card, network card controller, etc). As a result, virtual machines are completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications and device drivers, so you can use a virtual machine to run all the same software that you would run on a physical x86 computer.

Isolation: Virtual machines are isolated from each other as if physically separated. While virtual machines can share the physical resources of a single computer, they remain completely isolated from each other as if they were separate physical machines. If, for example, there are four virtual machines on a single physical server and one of the virtual machines crashes, the other three virtual machines remain available. Isolation is an important reason why the availability and security of applications running in a virtual environment is far superior to applications running in a traditional, nonvirtualized system.

Encapsulation: Virtual machines encapsulate a complete computing environment. A virtual machine is essentially a software container that bundles or encapsulates a complete set of
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virtual hardware resources, as well as an operating system and all its applications, inside a software package. Encapsulation makes virtual machines incredibly portable and easy to manage. For example, you can move and copy a virtual machine from one location to another just like any other software file, or save a virtual machine on any standard data storage medium, from a pocket-sized USB flash memory card to an enterprise storage area networks (SANs).
Hardware independence:

Virtual

machines

run

independently of underlying hardware. Virtual machines are completely independent from their underlying physical hardware. For example, you can configure a virtual machine with virtual components (eg, CPU, network card, SCSI controller) that are completely different from the physical components that are present on the underlying hardware. Virtual machines on the same physical server can even run different kinds of operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc). When coupled with the properties of encapsulation and compatibility, hardware independence gives you the freedom to move a virtual machine from one type of x86 computer to another without making any changes to the device drivers, operating system, or applications. Hardware independence also means that you can run a heterogeneous mixture of operating systems and applications on a single physical computer.

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Workstation is used in the software development, quality assurance, training, sales, and IT fields.Workstation streamlines software development and testing: Develop and test multiple operating systems and applications on a single PC. Connect virtual machines to simulate and test multitier configurations. Use multiple snapshots and debugging support to facilitate testing. Archive test environments on file servers where they can be easily restored or shared.Workstation enhances productivity of IT professionals: Configure and test desktops and servers as virtual machines before deploying them to production. Test new multitier applications, application updates, and operating system patches on a single PC. Host legacy applications within virtual machines, facilitating operating system migrations and eliminating the need to port legacy applications. Create a virtual library of end user configurations on a shared drive. Workstation facilitates computer based training and software demos:
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Package and deploy classroom material in virtual machines. Allow students to experiment with multiple

operating systems, applications, and tools in secure, isolated virtual machines. Configure virtual machines to undo all changes at shutdown. Demo complex or multitier configurations on a single laptop

VMware ACE
VMware ACE (assured computing environment)[26] is a software solution integrated in VMware Workstation that enables anyone to deploy and manage secure, platform-independent virtual machines that end users can use on their work PC, personal computer, or even a portable USB media device (in the way of a portable application). VMware ACE enables safe access to enterprise resources from assured computing environments. These isolated PC environments run on top of existing PCs. With virtual rights management, builtin copy protection controls, and automatic encryption, VMware ACE helps prevent theft, tampering, and unauthorized copying of applications, data, system settings, and files. Administrators can protect data and ensure compliance with IT policies, including software life-cycle management and access to data and applications. In essence, VMware ACE allows the creation of portable virtual machines.
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VMWARE PRODUCTS
Server Virtualization Product

VMware vSphere (ESX , ESXi, vCenter Server, and optional modules or products)

VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX 3.x, ESXi, vCenter Server 2.x, and VMware Consolidated Backup)

VMware SDK & API VMware vCenter Lab Manager VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager VMware vCenter Stage Manager VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

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VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat VMware vCenter Converter Standalone VMware Server.

Desktop Virtualization Product

VMware View (View Manager) VMware Workstation VMware ACE VMware Player VMware Fusion VMware ThinApp

HOST SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Like physical computers, the virtual machines running under Workstation perform better if they have faster processors and more memory. The terms host and guest describe physical and virtual machines: Host The physical computer on which you install the Workstation software is called the host computer, and its operating system is the host operating system. Guest The operating system running inside a virtual machine is called a guest operating system. Host system requirements include the following categories: PC Hardware Memory Display Disk Drives Local Area Networking Host Operating System
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PC Hardware Standard x86 compatible or x86, 64 compatible personal computer 733MHz or faster CPU minimum Compatible processors include the following: Intel Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M (including computers with Centrino mobile technology), Xeon (including Prestonia), Core, and Core 2 processors AMD Athlon, Athlon MP, Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Duron, Opteron, Turion 64, and Sempron Multiprocessor systems are supported. Support for 64-bit guest operating systems is available only on the following versions of these processors: Revision D or later of AMD Athlon 64, Opteron, Turion 64, and Sempron Intel Pentium 4, Core 2, and Xeon processors with EM64T and Intel Virtualization Technology. Memory You need enough memory to run the host operating system, plus the memory required for each guest

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operating system and for applications on the host and guest. The minimum is 512MB (2GB is recommended). For memory requirements, see your guest operating system and application documentation. As of version 6.5 of Workstation, the total amount of memory you can assign to all virtual machines running on a single host is limited only by the amount of RAM on the host. The maximum amount of memory for each virtual machine is 8GB. Display 16-bit or 32-bit display adapter is recommended. Disk Drives Guest operating systems can reside on physical disk partitions or in virtual disk files. Hard Disks IDE and SCSI hard drives are supported.VMware recommends at least 1GB free disk space for each guest operating system and the application software used with it. If you use a default setup, the actual disk space needs are approximately the same as those for installing and running the guest operating system and applications on a physical computer. 200MB (Linux) or 1.5GB (Windows) free disk space is required for basic installation. Delete the installer afterwards to reclaim disk space.

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Optical CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drives IDE and SCSI optical drives are supported. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives are supported. ISO disk image files are supported. Floppy Drives Virtual machines can connect to the hosts disk drives. Floppy disk image files are also supported. Local Area Networking You can use any Ethernet controller that the host operating system supports. Non-Ethernet networks are supported by using built in network address translation (NAT) or using a combination of host only networking plus routing software on the host operating system.

INSTALLATION PREREQUISITES

Installing VMware Workstation is usually a simple process of running a standard installation wizard. Before you run the installation program, be sure you have the following: A compatible host Verify that the computer and host operating system meet the system requirements for running Workstation. Workstation installation software If you have the packaged distribution of Workstation, the installation software is on the installation media in your package. If you have the electronic distribution, the installation software is in the file you downloaded. Workstation is available for Windows and Linux host computers. The installation files for both host platforms are included in the packaged distribution. Installing and Upgrading VMware Workstation. Workstation or VMware ACE serial number

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Your serial number is on the registration card in your package. If you purchased Workstation or VMware ACEonline, the serial number is sent by email. Your serial number allows you to use Workstation only on the host operating system for which you licensed the software. For example, if you have a serial number for a Windows host, you cannot run the software on a Linux host. You need one license for each user. To use Workstation on a different host operating system, purchase a license on the VMware Web site. You can also obtain an evaluation license at no charge for a 30-day evaluation of the software. For more information, go to the VMware Website. If you do not enter the Workstation serial number at installation time (an option available on a Windows host), you are prompted to enter it the first time you attempt to power on a virtual machine. A guest operating system After Workstation is installed, you need the operating system installation CDs, DVDs, or ISO image files to set up a guest in a virtual machine. (Optional) Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio To install the Eclipse or Visual Studio Integrated Virtual Debugger plug-ins included with Workstation, Eclipse or Visual Studio must be installed on the host before you run the Workstation installer. If you install one or both of these programs after you install Workstation, run the Workstation
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installer again and select the Modify option to install the plug-ins at that time.
CREATING AND UPGRADING A VIRTUAL MACHINE

Methods of Creating Virtual Machines Workstation gives you several options for creating virtual machines: Create a virtual machine from scratch. If you do not have any virtual machines or system images, you must use this method. Use the New Virtual Machine wizard to create a virtual machine. Next, you must install an operating system. The process is the same as installing it on a physical computer. The rest of this chapter describes this method of creating a virtual machine. Clone a virtual machine from an existing VMware virtual machine or virtual machine template. Clones are useful when you must deploy many identical virtual machines to a group. Cloning is preferable to copying a virtual machine because a clones MAC address and UUID are different from the original virtual machine, to avoid network conflicts. Use the Clone Virtual Machine wizard to create a clone. On Windows hosts, convert a physical machine, virtual machine, or system image that was created by using another VMware product or a thirdparty product.
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This process creates a clone of the original virtual machine or system image. Use the Conversion wizard to convert a physical or virtual machine or a system image.
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS FOR THE NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE WIZARD

As you complete the New Virtual Machine wizard, you are prompted to make decisions about many aspects of the virtual machine. The topics in this section provide information about the issues involved so that you can determine which choices you want to make before running the wizard. Easy Install Feature for Some Guest Operating Systems The easy install features enable you to perform an unattended installation of the guest operating system after you complete the New Virtual Machine wizard. You can use this feature regardless of whether you choose a typical or a custom configuration in the wizard. If you specify an installer disc or image (.iso) file and if the wizard detects an operating system that supports the easy install feature, you are prompted to supply the following information: For Windows guests: (Optional) Windows product key If you specify a product key, you are not prompted for it later, during installation of the operating system. Enter a
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product key unless the installation media already contains a volume license product key. Full name This name is used for registering the operating system. Do not use the name Administrator or Guest. If you use one of these names, you will receive an error message during installation of the operating system and be prompted to enter a different name. (Optional) Password On Windows operating systems other than Windows 2000, the password you enter here is used for an account with Administrator permissions. On Windows 2000, the password you enter here is used for the Administrator account. For Linux guests: Full name This name is used for registering the operating system, if registration is required. The first name is used as the host name for the virtual machine. User name You can use lowercase letters and numbers, with no spaces. Do not use the name root. Some operating systems set up sudo access for this user, and some require this user to use su to get root privileges. Password The password you enter here is used for both the user name you supply and the root user. The easy install feature is available for newer Windows operating systems and several Linux operating systems. The installation media that you
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can use include operating system installation CDs, DVDs, and ISO images. This feature also installs VMware Tools in the guest operating system. For more information about VMware Tools, see Components of VMware Tools on page 97. If you plan to use a CD, DVD, or ISO image that contains a product key number and is already set up to perform an unattended installation, the only benefit you gain by using the easy install feature is the automatic installation of VMware Tools. Typical Compared to Custom Configurations The New Virtual Machine wizard prompts you to choose between doing a typical configuration and a custom configuration. If you select Typical, the wizard prompts you to specify or accept defaults for the following choices: Medium for installing the guest operating system (CD, image file, or neither) Guest operating system Virtual machine name and the location of the virtual machine files Size of the virtual disk and whether to split the disk into 2GB files Hardware customization for advanced users: You are not prompted to specify the virtual machine version. The virtual machine version (Workstation 4, 5, 6, or 6.5) is assumed to be the one specified in the preferences editor. From the Workstation menu

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bar, choose Edit > Preferences, and see the setting for Default hardware compatibility. On the last page of the wizard, you can click Customize Hardware to change the defaults for memory allocation, number of virtual CPUs, network connection type, and so on. Many circumstances require you to select a custom installation. Select Custom if you want to do any of the following: Make a different version of virtual machine than what is specified in the preferences editor. Specify the I/O adapter type for SCSI adapters: BusLogic, LSI Logic, or LSI Logic SAS. Specify whether you want to create an IDE or a SCSI virtual disk, regardless of the default that is usually used for the guest operating system. Use a physical disk rather than a virtual disk (for expert users). Use an existing virtual disk rather than create a virtual disk. Place the virtual disk file in a location other than the virtual machine directory. Allocate all virtual disk space rather than allowing the disk space to gradually grow to the maximum.

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Guest Operating System Selection If you specify that the source media for installing the operating system is Installer disc or Installer disc image file and if the wizard can detect the operating system, you might not see a wizard page for selecting the operating system. After you specify an operating system or after the wizard detects it from the installation media, Workstation uses this information to do the following: Select appropriate default values, such as the amount of memory to allocate. Name files associated with the virtual machine. Adjust settings for optimal performance. Work around special behaviors and bugs within a guest operating system. If the operating system you plan to use is not listed, select Other for both guest operating system and version.

SETTING UP A NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE

The New Virtual Machine Wizard guides you through the key steps for setting up a new virtual machine, helping you set various options and parameters. You can then use the virtual machine settings editor (VM > Settings) if you need to make any changes to your virtual machine's setup.

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By default, the new virtual machine uses an IDE disk for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, NetWare and FreeBSD guests. The default for other guest operating systems is a SCSI disk.

PRODUCT BENEFITS
Benefits and Drawbacks One benefit of using a hosted virtualization architecture is ease of installation and configuration. For example, the VMWare Workstation software can be set up in minutes by running a basic installer in Windows. Once installed, an engineer can create several virtual machines that run different operating systems all on the same physical computer. In addition, VMMs that use hosted virtualization commonly run on a wide variety of PCs. Since a host operating system provides drivers for communicating with low-level hardware, VMM software can be installed on most computers without customization. As mentioned above, hosted virtualization

architectures are not capable of emulating or providing passthrough to many PCI I/O devices. In addition, since I/O requests from virtual machines must be directed through a host OS, performance can be degraded. Another drawback to hosted virtualization is the lack of support for real-time operating systems. Because the underlying host OS dictates scheduling amongst its applications and the VMM, it is usually not possible to run a real-time OS
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inside of a VM deterministically when using hosted virtualization. Binary Translation VMMs that use binary translation dynamically alter code that is executing to avoid affecting system state. Any time a virtual machines compiled code contains a privileged instruction (e.g. accessing an I/O device), the underlying VMM can use binary translation to appropriately redirect the I/O request and prevent conflicts between individual VMs. Hosted virtualization software typically makes use of binary translation; one example is the VMWare Workstation product previously mentioned. Because performance is degraded whenever code must be translated (any switch from a virtual machine to the VMM), virtualization software that uses binary translation typically inspects and translates groups of instructions at a time. By minimizing the amount of times that the VMM must interfere with virtual machine execution, software using binary translation can minimize the performance impact a user experiences. Hardware Assist Rather than modifying VM code as it is running, the hardware assist approach uses special processor technology to avoid changing system state upon privileged instructions. Both Intel and AMD have started including new virtualization features in their processors (called Intel-VT
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and

AMD-V)

to

automatically call a VMM when necessary. Many bare-metal hypervisors make use of this technology. As is the case with binary translation, performance can be degraded each time that a virtual machine's execution must be interrupted by the hypervisor. To minimize this impact, processors that incorporate hardware features for virtualization can be configured to only interrupt VM execution when absolutely necessary. For example, if a specific I/O devices is partitioned then it may be accessed by its assigned VM without hypervisor intervention. When using VMware Workstation in an environment using Media Access Control (MAC) addresses as unique identifiers (UID), the MAC address for each virtual machine should (and often must) be configured manually in order to ensure uniqueness (for example, in an environment in which network switchesimplement MAC security; or in an environment in which Altiris products use the MAC address as the UID). In such a situation, disabling all networks/adapters other than "bridged" and editing each virtual machine's to a .vmx file to change and "ethernet0.address" unique MAC

"ethernet0.addresstype" to "static" will help.

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THIRD PARTY RESOURCES

Ready-to-use virtual machines Many ready-made virtual machines (VMs) which run on VMWare Player, Workstation, and other virtualization software are available[27] for specific purposes, either for purchase or free of charge; for example a free Linux-based "browser appliance" with the Firefox browser installed[28] which can be used for safe Web browsing; if infected or damaged it can be discarded and replaced by a clean copy. The appliance can be configured to automatically reset itself after each use so personal information is not stored. VMs distributed legally only have freely distributable operating systems, as operating systems on VMs must be licensed; ready-to-use Microsoft Windows VMs, in particular, are not distributed, except for evaluation versions.

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Advantages Works on computers which aren't supported properly natively Ability to switch between Windows and Linux quickly Windows is running natively and therefore at full speed Can move guest from one system to another quite easily Easier installation (no partitioning needed) Run multiple versions of Linux simultaneously Disadvantages Extra overhead of running Windows as well as Linux at the same time Reduced performance of Linux No 3D support in Linux.

CONCLUSION
When incorporating virtualization into a

measurement or automation application, either hosted or bare-metal VMMs can be used. Each architecture has different implications on I/O, ease of installation, determinism, and other factors that must be considered. At a low level, these architectures depend on techniques such as binary translation,

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hardware assist, and paravirtualization to accomplish virtualization. As virtualization becomes more common in the engineering world, it is increasingly important for engineers to understand virtualization technology, the basic types of virtualization, and the underlying techniques that make it possible. By making informed decisions, designers can optimize the performance of virtualized systems while balancing I/O and other needs.

BIBLOGRAPHY

Brian Ward & Partners Pty Ltd Corporate Lawyers

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VMware, Inc. www.vmware.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware http://www.vmware.com http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC4210 http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws65_manual.pdf www.kat.ph/the-book-of-vmware-thecomplete-guide-to-vmware Get ready to experience the next biggest thing since virtualization.

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