Software Deployment

Whenever I contract at a company using Ghost or similar, the first thing I do is convert them to VMWare. VMWare is a huge timesaver as you can refresh an image in about 5 seconds and you can create mulitple "Snapshots" with different O/S configurations with the push of a button.
The only benefit Ghost has is that it's a true (non-virtualized) environment. It happens rarely, but the odd time I can't snapshot or test something properly because the O/S is virtualized. Adobe Photoshop or other apps that have video drivers is an example of this. But in that case, I just use a Ghost or RIS image for those one-offs.
If you really want to do things properly, get your company on VMWare ESX server. Then you can run O/S's off a centralized server from any machine with a web browser.

I agree with Turbokitty. The speed of VMWare snapshots is very impressive even comparing against dropping an image with ghost or other imaging software.

I recommend lots of ram, putting the vmware images on a secondary harddrive and one of the new processors especially if you plan on using the PC for anything else.

On of the other advantages is if you use dual screen, you can write your documentation on one screen and run the VMWare computer on the other screen. It's pretty convenient.

I had to use a "real" computer a few times especially with hardware related installations (cd-burning...).

I prefer VMWare over Virtual PC. It's a better product imo.

Sorry for jumping in...

I've moved from ghosting(slow), to MS Virtual PC and batch copying images(faster), to VMware and snapshots.
VMware is definitely the way to go.
However, I must be doing something wrong, it takes me 1-2 minutes to revert to snapshot. Mind you it's an old P4 1.8GHZ.
Is there a faster way other than revert?

Thanks,

Steve

My biggest gripe is the configuration I get for the PC using VMWare. Some days I still wish I had 9 desktop PCs on my desk because for some reason asking for a desktop with RAID is too much. I can get dual processors no problem but when I mention RAID I get strange looks. All I would like is SATA RAID 0 on two disks but even getting that can be a challenge. I do love VMWare but the big issue for me is when I have four or five VMs up at one time it can bring the host down to a crawl because there is only one disk servicing four VMs. To me this sounds logical to get some more spindles into the mix but getting people to spring the extra $100 to give me RAID 0 over two disks is like asking for the world.

I hear you. Another option is putting 4GB of memory in your PC. Won't access the drive as much. With 2 GB I can run two virtual sessions comfortably, 3 with effort.

Finding a PC mobo that can do RAID 0 is almost impossible. I've tried lots out but few can do 0 and none can do it without destroying the RAID after a few days. My latest purchase to achieve this was the Asus A8NE (Athlon 3000+), It can do RAID 3 (close) but I've gone through 2 mobo's, the hard drive controller has blown up on both after a couple of weeks under RAID 3.

Another expensive option is a dedicated card, but you won't find a SATA one that'll do 0 for anywhere near $100. At least I couldn't.

ESX on a bad-ass server is the way to go.

For me the $100 was to get the second drive since the machine already came with onboard RAID. I've had no issues with RAID 0 at home but then again I think both the motherboards are server boards. They don't even have the best raid controller on them. I can run 4-5 XP VMs on a system with 3GB of ram and two Xeon processors. I think the configuration is pretty sound other than the lack of RAID.

Using Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM to host my VMWare images. Everything else on my primary drive which is standard 7,200 RPM. Only issues I've really run into are when it accesses the CD-ROM.

That reminds me... USB memory keys are very slow with VMWare. Not that you should use them much but just a FYI.

If CPU and RAM is not a problem and the bottleneck is just the HD. Then why not try dynamic disks build in windows 2000 and higher? (raid software emulated)