VMware Workstation

…is the coolest thing.

I maintain a network that consists of a SuSE Linux terminal server and about 15 thin clients. The clients connect to the server via NoMachine’s NX terminal server technology. We are in the process of moving from booting the thin clients off of cds towards network booting. The only difficult thing about this transition has been setting up a staging/testing environment. Testing essentially requires its own network, complete with a dhcp/tftp server. Since we’re a small shop, we can’t afford that kind of investment.

Enter VMware. WMware Workstation is virtualization software, which means it lets you run “guest” operating systems on your computer (the “host”). Each guest thinks it is running on a normal PC.

I’ve used Workstation for a couple years now to satisfy my love for playing with operating systems, but had never before looked into its virtual networking capabilities. They’re impressive, as I’ve discovered. You set up Teams, which are basically a group of virtual machines connected together by various virtual networks you define. For each network you define, you can set the link speed and packet drop %. (Very useful for testing flaky wireless connections!)

I set up my Team to consist of one server and multiple thin clients. The server has two virtual network adapters, one connected to the “real” outside network, and one to a virtual network. On the “real” side, it looks to the rest of the network like just another computer, gets an IP address, has an internet connection, etc. SuSE is configured to respond to DHCP and tftp requests only on the other network adapter, so it doesn’t mess with the existing, “real” dhcp server. All the clients are connected only to the virtual network, where they are configured to network boot from the SuSE server.

You can also power on the whole Team at once. In my case, it starts the server, waits 100 seconds to allow the server time to boot, then powers on the thin clients, one every twenty seconds. Here is a screenshot showing a boot sequence in progress.

All this took maybe twenty minutes to set up, plus OS install on the server. All of it runs on a single machine, my workstation. I love virtualization.