virtual server software?

[chrisg]

Hey technerds,

I've been using VMWare server to run a virtual machine with CentOS 5.6 for my dev environment at work, but I've run into two problems that make me want to switch to a different piece of software for my VM.

One is that the lame-ass hardware on my work machine, although it is 64-bit, won't run a 64-bit VM with VMWare Server. It has something to do with the CPU/VMWare, but I can't be arsed to remember why this is.

The other is that VMWare server is nearing its end of life (or has hit its end of life). There's some VMWare replacement for it, but I'd like to check out some other options before continuing with a product that hasn't impressed me much.

Finally, has anyone used vagrant for managing and distributing VMs? I'm interested in hearing your experiences with it.

Thanks!

[Questionor]

I use https://www.virtualbox.org/ It's great. I've run 64bit windows vms on 64bit hardware. Though your 64bit hardware has to be have some special thing from intel to do it, I forget what it's called though. And sometimes your cpu does have it but your bios has it turned off and you just need to turn it on.

[chrisg]

I was just reading an article recommending Virtualbox, so hearing from someone with actual experience using it is a bonus.

Your description of the hardware requirements sounds suspiciously like the issue preventing my 64-bit machine from running 64-bit OSes with VMWare though... I will investigate tomorrow at work. Thanks!

[littleidiot]

We use virtual box 4.0.4. I've used it to run a linux instance running oracle on my MBPro running snow leopard. I've also run Windows XP on it for IE troubleshooting. We had problems upgrading from that version wrt network connectivity but apart from that it works fine.

Edit : it doesn't play nice with a CISCO VPN.