As part of the fight against piracy, I today switched from the decent VMWare Workstation 6 to the free VMWare Server 2. Besides being free, its significant (and, probably, main for me) advantage is the ability to start virtual machines automatically when the host operating system boots. Since my virtual machines have graduated from toys into infrastructure tools, it became a pain to RDP in every time after a power outage, launch Workstation, and click through the machines one by one. The last time that happened it was right when I was sitting exams, and I had to walk someone through it over the phone.
Server, on the other hand, runs as a service rather than an application, and lets you choose which machines start automatically and configure the order and delay between starts. On top of that, it runs over HTTPS, and — what surprised me most — gives access to the virtual machine’s console (asking you to install a plugin for FF or IE first). I wasn’t expecting that level of functionality at all; I assumed that being free and “server-grade” would mean sacrificing console access and being limited to network-only connections — but there it is. Windows and FreeBSD consoles right in the browser. Impressive.
It picked up the machines created by Workstation and kept right on going (of course, I made a backup first :). I was afraid I’d have to convert something — but it all worked without any extra steps.
On the downside — I had to change the network card on the virtual machine running Windows. I don’t even remember that being an issue in Workstation, but in Server there are two types of network adapters — some specific one and Generic. The freshly created machines had Generic and worked fine. The Windows one required changing the adapter type, logging in through the console, re-entering the IP addresses, and only after that did it start working.