Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Committee

["Arek Kempinski" <akempinski AT townofchapelhill.org>]

Well, virtual machine(s) have been around for some time now.  We experimented 
with Xen (open source variant of virtual machine) for many different 
reasons... From the article you quoted "Q: What is VMware Server?  A: VMware 
Server is a free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers. It 
enables companies to quickly provision new server capacity by partitioning a 
physical server into multiple virtual machines."  


So, Virtualization allows hardware abstraction so that any kernel 'thinks' it 
is talking to hardware, while it is actually conversing via one of the 
abstracting software processes.  Virtualization allows multiple instances of 
operating systems run simultaneously in same hardware (providing adequate 
hardware resources: disk/memory-space exists), but that is all it does.  
Emulators like 'wine' and win4lin actually "translate" windows applications 
calls to the kernel into something that Linux can process, therefore windows 
operating system is not required (unfortunately the free version of wine will 
not run MUNIS client, and commercial version is almost $100 per client; 
win4lin significantly eclipses that mark).  With VMware, one would still need 
to install windows in order to run windows application within the virtual 
machine (so no savings on windows license, and slight decrement in 
performance).   



On the other hand, I had more conversations with both MUNIS, and FourJ's.  I 
have since received, and experimented with MUNIS Macintosh client in "Sheep 
Saver" and "Basilisk" (Mac emulators for Linux).  So far, both to no avail, 
but the error codes appear more verbose and descriptive - perhaps with more 
time/lack...


A.


Arkadiusz (Arek) Kempinski
Town of Chapel Hill / IT dept.
405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC. 27514
(o) 919.968.2888 x356
(e) akempinski AT TownOfChapelHill.org <mailto:akempinski AT TownOfChapelHill.org> 
(f) 919.969.2017

________________________________

From: chtechcomm-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of 
chtechboard AT willraymond.org
Sent: Mon 06-Feb-06 16:04
To: Chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Chtechcomm] FYI: Free VMWare virtualization + our MUNIs



Hey guys,

The "leader" in O/S virtualization software, VMWare, has released
a free version of their product unencumbered with licensing issues:

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/faqs.html

What is virtualization and why should we care?  Virtualization
allows you to run Windows applications (in fact the whole windows
environment) on top of Linux.  The main argument (it seems) in moving
forward with the OSS pilot has been the MUNIS "problem".

Through VMWare's free or low cost next gen solution, we can solve
the MUNIs problem.

I'd like to hear from Bob and company on this development.

Will

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