optimizing vmware server 2.0 on a linux host

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

like many people, i like to tinker with all sorts of different technology including multiple operating systems as well as the different roles they can play. one of the best ways that i can do that is by using a virtualization product. i just happen to use vmware server 2.0 on my debian lenny server. vmware is one of the leaders in virtualization (if not the leader).

at home, i have five virtual machines that i rely on heavily for my day-to-day operations. i have two windows server 2008 domain controllers, two windows server 2003 servers running exchange 2003 and one windows server 2008 computer i use for remote desktop and management of services. some of these services can provide a fair load on my server and i was starting to see the impact, especially from my win2k8 vms. it seems that there are a number of optimizations that are not enabled by default in vmware server. i searched far and wide through vmware kb docs as well as blogs and web forums and came up with the following optimizations:

/Dev/Shm on it's not clutter, just organized chaos

optimizing vmware server 2.0 on a linux host