VMWare Server 2.0 Beta

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VMWare are starting to piss me off now. After much trepidation a month or so ago (following previous nightmares with upgrading VMWare Server and having hosts refuse to power on afterwards) I decided to finally take the plunge and 'upgrade' to the beta of VMWare Server 2.0, in all it's web-based management glory.

Of course, with it being a beta product, (even worse, a beta of a FREE product) it runs like an absolute dog, at least five times slower and less responsive than the 'thick' version of the management interface for the old GSX line (still got VMWare Server 1.0.4 installed on another, half as powerful machine and it runs like a dream).

Tonight - disaster! I finally got around to patching the server (WUS has been badgering me to install updates for weeks now) and, after rebooting, well bugger me with a rotten cucumber if it didn't just refuse point blank to power on any more VMs. Eventually, after trying it four or five times, chaning the account the VMWare Auth service uses to log on and all manner of other trickery I decided to delve into the logs - buried in one of them was the helpful titbit: "This product has expired". The bastards are dropping killcode into their betas. This is fair enough for a paid-for product, but for beta versions of FREE software? Sheesh. Not only that, but the error received when attempting to power on a VM is the ever-helpful "General System Error". Surely its not beyond the boundaries of common sense for their coders to develop some decent error-message generation? I mean, how hard can it be to scrape the data from the relevant portion of the logfile and display it onscreen when an attempt is made to circumvent the (free) license for a (free) product.

As a result of this, I'm currently stuck with no AV Server, no Monitoring, no WUS, no Exchange, no IDS and no RADIUS servers at home. Not the end of the world (though it does mean that I'm wasting my evening waiting for the new (free) beta of a (free) product to download - presumably containing more killcode so I'll end up going through the whole sorry process again) - but surely a major PITA for those people who are using the free version of ESX Server to try out virtualisation, or to run test environments.

After the fiasco a couple of weeks back - whereby killcode was left in the RTM release of ESX 3.5 r2 - causing many thousands of people (including a couple on this forum) to lose the ability to power on or VMotion hosts - I am starting to wonder whether its really worth persisting with VMWare. Its clear that EMC are putting increasing pressure on them to keep pumping stuff out without proper pre-release testing and, whilst this isn't on the same scale as the ESX drama, surely the practice of timing out a beta version of free software indicates that VMWare is sliding down the slippery slope to rampant commercialism.

 

Cheers Ken

Like I said, for products that are 'tasters' of full versions, thats all fair enough. However, for a free beta that is of a product that is only ever (if you believe VMWare) going to be free it doesn't make a damn bit of sense. I've just downloaded the new RC and am about to install it (took me about three hours because of Virgin's poxy traffic-shaping policy grrrrr). Hoefully that should enable me to start the VMs up again

 

FFS - this is starting to get ridiculous. Now I've discovered that, after uninstalling Beta 2.0, 2.0 R2 won't install at all - throwing up an error that looks like its related to Windows Installer not having the necessary rights to run an installation (even though I've got no software restrictions defined in GPOs and I'm using an account that's a Domain Admin)

 

Right - problem solved. There must be a bug in VMWare Server that doesn't like the way Windows processes security rights for software installation. In the end, I created a specific local policy on the server itself that allows members of the local admins group to install software - Bam - install went straight through.

In short, anyone thinking of upgrading to R2 of Vmware Server should take note of this - make sure you have a policy defined (either through GPO or in the Local Security Policy) that ensures the account you'll be running the install under has explicitly defined rights to allow software installation.

All VMs now back up and running - so far the only difference I note are two little boxes that advertise paid-for versions of VMWare (ESX and VMWare Workstation) - LOL - big surprise there!