Moving to VM on Windows 10 host, commercial

[^_^]

Hey,

I'd love some advice regarding VMs. I'm using Windows 10 and I'd like to move my software into a VM (again Windows 10; as guest).
I'm drowning in embedded studios (Atmel, Cypress, Renesas e2, General Eclipse, Keil, System workbench etc.) as well as other software.
The idea behind going VM is to keep stuff better organized, shareable for work, safer (!!!) etc.

Use will be also commercial.

One of the options is buying VMware workstation player (166 EUR), but I've read some news, that do not bring confidence in this product.
Especially for long-term use.

Any suggestions?

Have a lovely weekend!

[ovnr]

Isn't VMware Player free? I suppose the commercial clause might be an issue, not that I'd give two shits.

In any event, I'm really very happy with the VMware products I'm using (Workstation, ESXi, vCenter converter). I'd strongly suggest going with Workstation Pro though, if you're going to spend money on it. Just the snapshots feature and sparse linked clones are lifechangers.


I'd suggest grabbing the trial version and giving it a try.

[Ampera]

I like VMWare products. IMO you will not find better virtualization software around, but it comes with a steep corporate boot up your ass.

VirtualBox I think is good for free commercial use, you just need to check the licence agreement for rights to it. It's the next best thing, but in the past I found the host-guest interactions are a bit shit.

[Iwanushka]

Windows 10 has a thing called Hyper-V check it, free stuff and most of the time it's fine.

[^_^]

I've read about Hyper-V before posting and was not thrilled
What I need is really good hardware support (USB stuff, etc.) as I want to program/debug/connect to MCU from within the VM.
Thanks for the responses, I was just a little bit shocked that there's not really much choice in the VM market!

I think there might be 25% off for Workstation soon (again!) as it seems they had the promotion already twice in May.
Today they started 25% off for Fusion.

I wonder whether often promos mean there will be Workstation 13 soon... Couldn't find any info on the net regarding that, though.

[nctnico]

Just use Virtualbox from Oracle. Works like a charm. I'm using it daily to run XP on a Linux host and for testing software with other Windows versions if necessary.

[james_s]

I've been using VirtualBox for a long time and it generally works well. It seems to work better on a Linux host but I use both and it's fine.

[^_^]

Allright,
thank you all for responses

[Omicron]

I've been using virtual machines to develop in for the past 10 years or so. The reason I started doing this is much the same as yours: it allows you to easily separate projects and archive your entire setup once a project is done. I've tried different products but I always come back to VMWare. Reason: USB support. From JTAG dongles to test equipment to esoteric things like USB sniffing software: it all just works. Its USB emulation is by far the best I could find in any virtualisation product.

One caveat: do not use Linux as a host for VMWare. The combination is brittle (kernel updates frequently break things in mysterious ways). I'm running VMWare Fusion on a Mac which has proven to be a very reliable combination. I've used it on Windows without issues as well.

[alm]

Keep in mind that the Virtualbox proprietary extensions, necessary for USB 2.0 support, are only licensed for personal use, educational use or evaluation. So unless you feel like trying to negotiate commercial licensing with Oracle, I guess that rules out Virtualbox for commercial use unless you can manage with just USB 1.1 speeds.

[VulcanBB18]

For home use, another vote for VirtualBox here, just with the previously mentioned caveats.

VMWare player is really the only other option - unless you want to move into cloud services such as AWS, but that might not suit your end objective.

cheers,

[X]

Keep in mind that the Virtualbox proprietary extensions, necessary for USB 2.0 support, are only licensed for personal use, educational use or evaluation. So unless you feel like trying to negotiate commercial licensing with Oracle, I guess that rules out Virtualbox for commercial use unless you can manage with just USB 1.1 speeds.

From the license:

“Personal Use” is use solely by the person downloading the Product from Oracle on a single Host Computer, provided that no more than one client or remote computer is connected to that Host Computer and that client or remote computer is used solely to remotely view the Guest Computers.

Nothing here barring its use for developing a commercial product, only that the person who uses it has to download it themselves.

From the FAQ:

3. What do you mean by personal use and educational use in the Personal Use and Evaluation License (“PUEL”)?

    Personal Use is defined in the PUEL as an instance of the VirtualBox Extension Pack that is downloaded onto a single Host Computer and accessed on the same Host Computer or on a single client that is connected to that Host Computer for the purpose of displaying Guest Computers remotely.

    Educational use is defined in the PUEL as “any use by teachers or students in an academic institution... as part of the institution’s educational curriculum.”

Again, no mention of using VirtualBox for commercial activity being disallowed.

[alm]

I stand corrected. Interesting definition of personal use. Although I find "provided that no more than one client or remote computer is connected to that Host Computer" very vague, does that include connections unrelated to Virtualbox like shared folders?

It seems that the extensions should be fine for small companies that have engineers set up their own computers. The only limitation is that you can not set up a computer with Virtualbox for e.g. a newly hired co-worker/intern.

[Jeroen3]

I suggest you get VMware workstation to have at least some technical support when shit hits the fan.