Virtualization dates back to the introduction of CP/CMS later renamed IBM VM-370. VM-370 provided two key ingredients. Multiprogramming and extended machine with better interface with the hardware[1]. The recent interest in Virtualization came on the back drop of energy conservation and providing services to users. The explosive growth of the needs of internet and data centers has fueled this renewed interest in Virtualization. Virtualization Software Already have experimented with a virtual machine player VMware Player marketed by VMware Inc. Using this we installed FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Gentoo on top of Windows XP. Whats the next step towards Virtualization? Hypervisor? Hypervisors are of two basic types. Type one are those which provide direct interface between the Guest OS and the hardware. While the type two hypervisor has a host OS onto which the virtualization software is installed and then the guest OS is installed. VMware ESX and GSX are examples of type 1 and type 2 hypervis...

Installing FreeBSD on top of XP via VMware Player. The experience is pretty nice until now. Installation steps were pretty simple. 1. Downloaded FreeBSD ISO from the website (http://www.freebsd.org/where.html) 2. Then installed the ISO via VMware Player The first reboot led me to a prompt $ and ability to run various commands. The next step is to install KDE. Started off installing KDE by executing the following command (make install clean) on the command line in the directory (/usr/ports/x11/kde4/). this led to downloading the kde from internet. Then since no proxy was setup therefore an error was encountered. This was solved by setenv http_proxy http://myproxyaddress:8080 . The command line came up easily the only problem was that KDE failed to install and gave the error "undefined reference to vtable projectbuildermakefilegenerator". Trying to figure out what to do with this error. Tried to google, rebuild ports, reload ports and lets see what happens. But overall...

Recently I got a recommendation to use VMware Player to install linux. Ever since it has grown on me. I have install Ubuntu 9.10, edUbuntu, Ubuntu 7.10 and Gentoo. Especially the way it dynamically uses memory instead of reserving bulk of memory space. If i were to actually partition the hard disk and install all these OS I would have had to give up somewhere between 3GB ~ 30 GB. But now I am only using 11 GB of space. Apart from this benefit another amazing feature is that a separate IP address is available (even when connecting to a DHCP Server). This is not only keeps it clean and simple but also allows interaction with the guest OS via network interface. Another interesting feature is the automatic restoration of the virtual machine state. This feature comes especially handy when dealing with power failures or unintentional closing of the window. The installation steps are pretty much simple. 1. Install VMware Player from the website (http://www.vmware.com/products/player/). ...