Jumba -> Thanks a lot. This information also gave me one other answer that I did not have: "How can I start and stop a virtual server from shell."
My testing environment now consist of one SME 7.3 gateway with vmware server, one SME server-only on lan with vmware server, one Windows XP with vmware server and one with vmware workstation and vmware workstation has also been tested on a Ubuntu workstation.
My testing and my impression, until now, of the vmware contrib can be summed up like this:
1. The instructions found in the wiki for installing the wmware server works perfect every time.
2. Running virtual installations does as a general rule not affect the stability of the underlaying operating system. Even though there might be accidents with the virtual installations this will generally not affect the underlaying (SME) operating system.
3. If the virtual installation is running on a SME server running in server-gateway or private server-gateway mode (I'm testing with the last variant) it will be very difficult to gain full access to the installations from lan and from internett. The way of using a virtual installation running on a server-gateway could be to install a virtual windows client on the internal virtual network and make the access from this. A virtual installation on the gateway will, I think normally be running in vmware nat mode. There is a lot of written information on the vmware web, but I were not able to solve the access problem until now. (The problems is related to the nat mechanism.)
4. If the virtual installation is running on a SME server running in server-only mode, the virtual installations can be bridged and there will be no problem releated to access at all. When doing virtualization on a SME server-only installation the virtual installations will be accessable, with a lan address, like any other server installation.
5. If you for some reason want to have a virtual Windows client installation the Windows 2000 SP4 is a very good performing virtual client that runns very well with only 256 mb of dedicated ram. (There will be some overhead so it will use slightly more.) XP SP is tested and can also be used, but I think it it pulls more resources and more memory and runns slower. The new installed virtual Windows 2000 Pro fills ca 2 Gb. XP approx 4 GB (and SME server approx 1 GB If I remember it right.)
6. If you like to have some remote logon option for a virtual Windows 2000 client running inside your SME gateway, the free logmein.com service is the best option, if you trust their security consept. Using the Vmware server console via internet for this purpose works to slowly. I tried VNC Tight and it did not perform well either. Windows 2000 does not have windows remote desktop, so I have not tested this.
7. The free Vmware server product is a superior product to the commersial workstation product. Virtual installations made under vmware workstation can not be runned under vmware server. On the other hand virtual installations were copied over from SME 7.3, where they vere made and over to a vmware server running on XP. This worked without a problem.
8. Using USB units like a camera seems to be a bit tricky. On both tested hardware the setup was rather tricky. On one hardware XP and Win 2000 clients with connected camera crached all the time. On one hardware it worked more stable.
9. If you have a SME server only with 1 GB of ram and vmware on it, running in server-only mode, then this will be a exelent platform for testing out new beta revisions of the SME server (like SME 8.0) and new contribs. When you have messed it all up, you can just delete your virtual server and copy over a new one from the backup coupy. Your host (SME) system will still be clean and unchanged while your "guest" is replaced.
10. When it comes to performace the vmware web page claims that there is not any difference between a Linux and a Windows host operating system. Could be something with the hardware, but during my testing I beleve that the SME based virtual installations performed quite a bit bether than the Windows XP based installations.
One insteresting open question:
"How will a dedicated Asterisk distro like Astlinux or Trixbox perform as a virtual server installation under sme/vmware ?"
As there is, until now, not any known way to forward ports from internet to the virtual servers at a SME gateway, it has to be done on a server-only installation.
Today I run my SME Asterisk server direct on the host operating system of the SME gateway. This gives a direct external IP to the Asterisk server as my ADSL modem runs in bridge mode. I would guess thiss arrangement will give the best (for me) possible performance.
I would guess that running a virtual Trixbox or an AstLinux installation as virtual installations on a SME server-only server will lead to slover performance and reduced quality. On the other hand this is not 100 % for sure, so it could be rather interesting to know.
If anyone has some ideas, some experiences, some info or some open questions about how the new vmware contrib can be used, please leave a message