A few months ago, VMware released a free version of its desktop virtualization software, VMware Player. It’s a great application for running a second operating system on your desktop; the only problem is you can’t create new virtual images using VMware Player. With a little work, however, you can use VMware Player to create guest operating systems.
How to Use VMware Player to Create your Own Images
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This seems kind of silly. VMware Server is free too, and that can make virtual images without having to resort to using Qemu to make new blank drive images and such.
This predates vmware server being ‘free’.
Actually I find this way easier than using VMware Server. Once you know the file syntax it’s very quick and simple to do, saves having the sheer size and cruft of Server installed.
Try:
http://www.easyvmx.com/
Online .vmx Creator
Or:
http://petruska.stardock.net/Software/VMware.html
Look for “VMX Builder” at the bottom of the page. It’s a very nice GUI app that builds your .vmx and .vmdk files.
i believe on ubuntuforums is the “original” article.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=160760
and before that
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=84275
Edited 2006-06-15 06:50
http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/vmware-player-image-creatio…
disk image and config template all set up for you. Have to try it.
i really don’t see the point in this, vmware server rc1 is so much better and you’re using the proper tools, not some hack.
you should still be able to play back the vm’s in player if you really must.
that said, i don’t see the point in people using workstation still either, and gsx is pretty pointless too.
to me it’s server or esx.
Pretty much is pointless to you then?
Perhaps other persons don’t want the server installed?
And the other solutions can hardly be called hacks.
i really don’t understand that though.
why not install the server if you’re prepared to install the player? it’s not as if you have to install the webgui with iis/apache etc.
and i would call the non-official solutions hacks as if vmware changes the format, the hacks won’t work anymore.
the player hacks were only ever made because people wanted a way to use the free player as a free alternative to workstation, now they have the free server.
I’m not sure… but I read that the licens of the “server” doesn’t allow the use of the software in a commercial environment
but… don’t believe me
The license for VMware Server is completely free. You can use it in any environment including commercial. You only have to pay if you want support.
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR VMWARE® PLAYER
http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/player.html
VMWARE® SOFTWARE BETA TEST AGREEMENT
http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=SERVER_LX_…
for vmware server I read:
“In no event shall Licensee use the Beta Software for Licensee’s product development or any other commercial purpose.”
… and I don’t read that in the player’s eula.
This is correct; VMware Server (Beta) technically isn’t meant for production use. VMware doesn’t want people unfairly talking smack about their (beta!) virtualization software blowing up production VM’s. Not that it’s likely to happen but there’s a reason it’s called “Beta” software after all!
It’s common sense, almost silly to have to be that explicit in a EULA but there’s a lot of folks who like to run with scissors then place the blame elsewhere when they bleed.
With VMware Server 1.0 Final, customers will be encouraged to use this free product in production. If it’s a highly mission critical application then the option is there to buy support. When you outgrow VMware Server there’s a migration strategy to go to ESX 3.0 (Or Virtual Infrastructure 3) – At the end of the day VMware wants to make it easy to get into virtualization and then provide options when you start to get really serious about Virtual Infrastructure. I would say it’s a pretty enlightened strategy on their part.
right on DanM!
Last year I wrote an article about creating vmware hd images and configuring the vmx configuration file.
The articles is located on my site http://www.lorenzoferrara.net/ (choose “Blog”)
I also created a file (virtual_machine.tar.gz – bottom of the article) that contains some ready-to-use vmware hd images (various size) and a vmx file.
Thanks! Very good and very clear.
One of the main reasons for using Workstation is the use of cloning. Cloning allows you to have many virtual machines based on a base image without taking up a huge amount of disk space. For instance, You could have a base image of WinXP without patches. Then clone it and add patches. Then have a third clone with other software installed. With player you would have to have 4 full copies of the virtual machine. Clones only take up space beyond what you use from the base image. Plus clones can be merged and back tracked. VEry cool stuff if you are doing development.
Ever since VMWare made their player free I’ve been quite impressed with it. Its the first time I was able to use one of VMWare’s products, before that it was booting up live cds with qemu.
Does anyone know if there is a way to load a ghost image into vmware? Either having it load the image file itself or creating a harddrive file and ghosting the image onto that? It would be quite handy for those of us having to support multiple versions of Windows. I could run win2000 and use XP in a vmware session to help troubleshoot problems, or vice versa.
There are tools on VMware’s site that will allow you to mount a virtual disk as a regular drive. You could then use ghost to image a drive to the virtual drive. Assuming you arent trying to ghost the partition you booted from. Otherwise you will have to drop to dos and image to cd or dvd or maybe a second/external drive. Then back in windows ghost should allow you to blow that image onto the virtual drive mounted on your system.