What are VMWare Servers?

Many of computer enthusiasts probably have already hear about virtual machines or in other terms VMWares. First of all, a VMWare is a program that enables a single computer and system to run multiple operating systems. It was founded by Edouard Bugnio, Edward Wang, Mendel Rosenblum and Diane Greene in 1998. By that time VMWare’s operation is not known to the public, only in February 1999 when it launched it demo version, and in May 1999 when it officially launched to the public the first VMWare product, the VMWare Workstation. And only in 2001 when it was followed by VMWare servers.



VMWares are divided into two classifications, the servers and the workstations. The workstation, or otherwise also known as VMWare desktop, are for single machine operations, managing only virtual machines define on that particular machine or computer. Whereas the workstation are VMWare that may be able to access other VMWare workstation from other VMWare workstation on other machines or computers, in expense of course of the computer’s physical memory also known as RAM, and also the video card’s memory and display capability.



There are a number of VMWare workstations as well as VMWare servers, but needless to say that the VMWare servers surpassed the count of VMWare workstations. The list of VMWare servers are vSphere 4 (rebranded version VMWare Infrastructure), Infrastructure 3, ESXi (formerly ESX Server ESXi edition), ESX (formerly ESX Server), VMWare Server (formerly GSX Server), vCenter Site Recovery Manager, vCenter Lab Manager, Capacity Planner, vCenter Lifecycle Manager, vCenter Stage Manager, vCenter Server Heartbeat, vCenter AppSpeed, vCenter Update Manager, vCenter Server, Data Recovery, vCenter Orchestrator, and vCenter Converter (formerly VMWare P2V).



Among the VMWares, not all of them can run all the different operating systems. Some VMWares can only run their native but different version operating systems, like "Windows Virtual PC" that can only run native windows operating system from Windows XP to Windows 2008 Server and Windows 7. Same as true with "Linux VServer", that can only run and accommodate Linux variants. While some VMWares can be used for different operating system variants, like Virtual PC 2007 that can handle both Windows and Linux. Also, not all VMWares can be installed on different existing platforms like the x86 and 64-bit machines. Others can handle both platforms while the others can only handle the x86 machines. Nevertheless, picking the VMWare server that’s most compatible on one’s operation is the most important on VMWare operations.