My adventure began with a brief exposure to virtualization while attending a Cisco networking introductory class in 2004. The instructor had a small network of virtual computers all running on his laptop to demonstrate correct and incorrect network environments. I thought it was pretty cool at the time, but didn't have any practical application for that myself.
Fast forward to 2009. I work for a small company in which I wanted to experiment with some linux functionality using Fedora. I didn't want to dedicate a full workstation or server to these experiments. I remembered the cool virtualization concept and decided to play. I started with Microsoft's virtualization server since we are primarily a Microsoft shop. This solution didn't require a dedicated server. The setup was easy, but the Fedora build didn't seem to work smoothly, so I tried VMWare's ESXi Server 3.5. (Both Microsoft's and VMWare's server versions are free.)
I did have to bite the bullet and re-task an older server since ESXi does require a dedicated server. They do have a workstation build that you can install on top of an existing windows build, but that was only a trial version, and I didn't feel like having to go through a purchase or a reinstall if I decided to continue using it. The setup was fast, easy, and Fedora went in seamlessly. I was now committed to VMWare over Microsoft.
My reasoning behind this decision was:
- VMWare worked easily with Fedora and Microsoft didn't.
- VMWare has been working with virtualization for years while Microsoft is a relatively new contender.
- VMWare ESXi is the host operating system, while Microsoft still requires that you have an underlying operating system running to support the virtualization environment.
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