Hey congrats on even trying to make the switch at all. We have moved some applications off of Windows to Linux and UNIX (Solaris), namely DNS to BIND and fileshares/printing to Samba. We are also using Xen in "experimental production" to drive some Sunray desktop appliances (Dom-0 is Debian AMD64, Sunray server is CentOS 3 in a Dom-U) and internal web applications. Windows apps we have left are the domain controllers (until Samba 4!), one legacy Notes server, blackberry stuff, and the antivirus server.
Floid wrote:
Helpfully, there are various apps (*cough* Wordperfect *cough* Timeslips *cough*) that are going to require full Windows VMs for reasons I've already researched.***
I'm sure you have examined this already, but have you considered
Crossover Office? They have a demo available so you can see if your applications run satisfactorily. I am happily running Lotus Notes R7 with it on AMD64 Linux. I saw your note about WINE, but Crossover Office may do better.
-On the VMWare front, is there any compelling reason to grab a license of Workstation to create the machine images versus the freed GSX, given that I only have to do same twice?
I am actually going to be trying this product for a storage test box we are setting up for customer demos. I can let you know how it goes? :-) At least one of the VMs will be running Windows.
-Network filesystems: Your learned opinion -- let the Windows VMs speak SAMBA on the wire, or handle everything through *NIX mounts?
I haven't used VMware in a while, but IIRC there is a backend driver that uses Samba without going over the wire and it is very fast. I might be getting this confused with another virtualization solution though :-/
Your other stuff I don't feel like I can comment on. I work for a Sun reseller, and while Sun is now selling systems with Opteron processors none of them (save "workstation" models) are in tower form factor. Our office machines though, I do build those using parts from Newegg. I manage to find nice, plain cases and stuff there too!
