Some Questions on Virtual Machines and File Types

[dsm600rr]

Hello all,

After recently doing an upgrade for a client going from R10.1 to R11.1, I have learned a lot along the way and of course some questions came up.

Before I did the upgrade, I simulated it in my lab as this client is very large (you all know of them) and I could not have any mistakes.

So they are obviously running a Type 1 Hypervisor

I was not able to do so, rather I simulated the upgrade with a Type 2 Hypervisor, Host: Windows 10 - VMware Workstation Pro.

- The first thing that came up was they requested an .ova file. I always used the .iso. Why would you use one over the other? I also observed that the .ova installed as Redhat while the .iso installed as CentOS.
- My next question is what would you recommend as the best Type 2 Hypervisor? I have only used VMware Workstation however I will likely be purchasing something so I can have many VM's
- What is the benefit of running a Type 1 Hypervisor over Type 2, other than no host OS getting in the way of resource management?
- What is the Datastore on a Type 1 Hypervisor? Is that basically the same as this dir on a type 2 Windows?

ACSS / ACIS
Dcomm, LLC

https://dcommsc.com

 

[IamaSherpa]

The iso file is a full clean setup file which you have to set up step by step till the end, both for the "virtual hardware" settings and the ethernet/domain ones.
Viceversa the OVA file is an already prepared machine with ip office default ethernet settings (192.168.42.1/43.1) BEFORE the ignition process, this is to make it faster and easier the full setup for a IP Office Server Edition or an Application Server.
I installed on my Win10 laptop many iP Office virtual machines for testing purposes using vmware Workstation Pro and even if I am not a vmware expert I suppose Type 1/2 difference is about the engaged resources, Type 2 has to support the additional hosting OS which needs resources itself.
In order to have a comparable scenario between my laptop testing environment and a real vmware platform I installed as additional vm the ESXI 7.0 and into it I created the datastore and virtual IP Offices: the whole system needs more workstation resources but give me a scenario similar to the in production environment, it's very useful.

 

[ipohead]

As IamaSherpa says .ova files are optimized for virtualisation whereas .iso files are just an image of an installation DVD.

As IP Office Server Edition or Application Server is designed to be managed remotely there's no need for a GUI on the host server.

I'd say VMware Workstation is the best type 2 hypervisor for a PC as VMWare is the market leader (there are free and paid for Pro versions). You could look at Microsoft Hyper-V which has type 1 and type 2 versions and there are several others available.

If you really want to learn about VMware products you could sign for free membership of the VMware User Group. There's also a paid option which has access to their software.

The Datastore is where the virtual machines are kept and this isn't always on the host server.