When initially creating a new virtual machine for Solaris 10 the default memory size is set to 580Mb.   At  this setting the install  either hangs or progresses so slowly that it might as well be hanged.  Increasing the memory to 1024Mb solves this problem and the install progresses and enters the graphical (X-windows) install for OpenSolaris.

Getting past the memory issue, the install continues but eventually fails due to lack of disk space.  The failure does not show up until  all questions have been answered from within the graphical install portion and the installer attempts to partition the provided disk space.  The default hard drive size is set to 8GB.  Setting this to 12GB does not prevent the failure of the installation.  Pre-allocating the disk space as a single file (not broken into 2GB chunks) was also ineffective; the installation still failed due to lack of disk space.  The install fails and the diagnostics appear to show that there was little to no disk space available.  This can be circumvented by manually partitioning the disk space.

Once the install process has reached the graphical portion, I was able to open a new terminal window and used the ‘fdisk’ command to create a new disk label (using solaris defaults) for the disk space provided within VMWare.  Once the disk was labeled and written, the install procedure was able to identify the disk space correctly and the install continued to completion.

Perhaps a brief explanation of virtualization (of the software variety) might be in order here. Normally your operating system (be it OSX, a Linux-variant, or WindowsXP) runs on top of the hardware platform that you’ve chosen. The operating system needs to have various drivers that allow it to connect to and control the myriad little pieces of the system. From network connections to video cards, they all need corresponding software for the operating system to be able to utilize them. So imagine that you have a program that runs on top of your operating system that intercepts and mimics all of the system calls and abstracts and isolates them from the real hardware you are running on. This software creates a separate ‘virtual’ computer on top of your existing system. You can then install a new operating system along with various programs into this ‘virtual’ computer and you then have a computer system running inside of (or on top of, depending on your viewpoint) your original system.

But that’s silly you say. Why in the world would I want to run two operating systems, one inside the other? Surely that can’t be very efficient! Actually there are several benefits to running a virtual system. First and foremost is the ability to create distinctly separate environments in which to work. For example: My primary laptop is as I’ve mentioned previously a wonderful little Apple Macbook running the latest OSX Leopard operating system. There are times when it would be beneficial to have access to various WindowsXP programs, such as Internet Explorer when I am trying to work out some cross-browser html/css hack. Or I need access to certain security tools that are only available for Windows (read: Cain & Abel ~ caution: this site is not safe for work environments) or perhaps I’m working on a particular Solaris 10 issue. Wouldn’t it be handy if I could just fire up the operating system of my choice from within my macbook?

And that’s exactly what I do with VMWare Fusion! Not only do I have two full WindowsXP installs, I also have the latest Ubuntu Stable version (7.10 as of this writing) and a full version of OpenSolaris 10 (Indiana) all available to me with just a click!

Another advantage comes from the ability to consolidate server hardware.  Suppose that you have a web server that is used primarily during business hours and a secure ftp server that has its peak activity during the middle of the night.  Instead of maintaining two separate servers, you could consolidate them onto a single server by migrating them into a VMWare instance running on a single server.   With some of VMWare’s other tools you could even load balance both the web server and the ftp server across multiple machines.

So you get the ability to access multiple operating systems from a single desktop, giving you the ability to create an on-the-fly virtual lab.  From a server perspective you can consolidate hardware resources (reducing power, heat and physical space consumption) or leverage your existing hardware better by taking advantage of VMWare’s Virtual Infrastructure.

One particularly useful benefit of VMWare’s Fusion product is its ‘Unity’ feature that allows you to run applications from a virtual machine along side your mac software.  Instead of a single window dedicated to your virtual machine and all of the programs that run inside of it, you get a drop down menu that allows you to run the individual applications in their own window!  Pretty slick and a fun trick to show your co-workers that you can run the latest Internet Explorer on your Mac (useful for testing those browser html/css hacks mentioned earlier!)

See some initial Fusion screenshots after the cut.

VMWare Fusion for OSX

(click on image for larger version)

Start up Screen:

Network Configuration:

Output of the ‘zoneadm’ command within a bash shell on Solaris:

(running within the Fusion virtual server)

Setting up a new virtual machine:

Choosing the O/S type:

Setting up the virtual file system:

Initial boot:

Starting the O/S install:

From here on its just a normal install process for whatever operating system you’ve chosen to run inside the virtual machine! Once up and running, you can take snapshots of the system to enable restores or clones, and you can also suspend the virtual machine in whatever state its currently in, close Fusion, turn off your computer, come back in a couple of days and start everything back up and the virtual machine will start up exactly where you left it. You can even move the virtual machine to a different host computer if you wish. You could have a big 8-core box that you do most of your development on with a bunch of various virtual machines, and then transfer the ones you need to a usb drive to take along on that business trip! Very convenient!

If you’re using a virtualization product, I’d love to read about your experiences (good and bad) in the comments!