niflheim

I’ve been using VMWare for a while.  Let’s start with why I do that.

1) Some of my newer computers are dramatically more powerful and energy efficient (all around) than my older systems.  It’s simpler/cheaper/saner to virtualize many/most/all of the older machines and run them on a single physical server.  Consolidating their respective functions onto a single server would take weeks or more of my time, so this was the way to go.

2) Being able to “pack up” an entire server and “take it with me” to different servers (or laptops) makes my life and my work a lot easier.

So I decided to try Sun’s xVM VirtualBox today.  It’s leaner/meaner/maybefaster and “Open Source”, and it supports a better set of host operating systems than VMWare Server itself, so I was actually looking forward to it.

Right up until 30 seconds into it when I encountered an apparent limitation, in the form of not supporting 64 bit guests.  I found this on a forum post, wherein We Freeloading Community are informed that the team is demand driven and focused on the needs of paying customers and that this isn’t one of them.

Sad to think that the paying customers don’t need 64 bit guests.  It made me wonder what they’re virtualizing, really.

Old and/or “small, dedicated, low-load” systems, a’la my #1 above?

Presumably they aren’t pre-provisioning servers for scale-out, because the first thing they’d want then are 64 bit systems, and their Demand would Drive support for this seemingly wild and exotic feature.

Oh well.  Back to VMWare.  A real shame, too, as I was looking forward to moving some of my VMs to the Macbook Pro.

I guess I need to buy VMWare’s Mac product, now.  Their paying customers apparently need the same things I do.