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Hi,

For many years I've been running Homeseer in a Virtual Machine. (VMware Server 2.0 running on a Windows 7 64-bit host)
VMware Server 2.0 reached end-of-support status almost one year ago!
For some reason I feel like getting rid of it. Getting it running under Windows 7 was a *pain*.

http://www.virtualbox.org
Virtualbox however has many many updates and seems to be alive.

Q: Who has Homeseer running on Virtualbox? What are your experiences?

Q: Any alternatives?

Re: Any alternatives?

I'm using the free version of XenServer for all my VM's.
http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_1688615.asp

I am using vmware vsphere esxi 5. It works perfectly. Also esxi supports usb passthrough so you can use youre zwave stick or rfxcom.

just wondering will esxi run on a macmini?

My macmini is still running fine with Windows Xp...need to upgrade and like to do this virtual.

Also the same problem with Vmware server this is running on the XP macmini.

I'm running VMWare fusion on my Mac mini (OSX Lion). In Fusion I have a XP machine running Homeseer and Plugwise.

Don't know if ESXI will run native on the mini though. Any reason why you want to run it native and not on top of OSX?

Dickr43 wrote:Any reason why you want to run it native and not on top of OSX?

resources i would guess.

Could be one reason, all depending on the number of virtual machines one wants to use. I'm only using 2 XP machines virtual and that works great....

Maybe better to use OSX as host..
My biggest problem in the past was no acces to the console in the past...there are now even Ipad apps for that part.
I have no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached to the macmini.

I'm using OSX screen sharing from Finder for that. Apple's Remote Desktop (not MS's version) is also very nice .....

Regarding alternatives:
I'm using MS Hyper-V for 4 years now and I'm very happy with it. It's hosting VMs of Windows 2003, Vista, XP, Fedora and CentOS and is very reliable.
No USB support for the guests, but for me that was no real issue.

christiand wrote:I am using vmware vsphere esxi 5. It works perfectly. Also esxi supports usb passthrough so you can use youre zwave stick or rfxcom.

I'm at the moment testing vSphere ESXi 5, but it's telling me that it will expire in 60 days! (60 days remaining on your evaluation)
Do I relly need to buy a "licens" after 60 days, or can I get (like XenServer) a "free" licens? The free licens will give me less options in XenServer.

ESXi is in free and paid version...I thought that's only the support.


@Dick
I use Parallels on my desktop.
Have a Vmware Fusion 3 licenses somewhere.
Can you auto start the guest systems without login in OSX?

Don't know that, never tried. I just open Screen sharing on my mini from my Macbook whenever I want to do something on the VMWare envirinment.

Okay.
I downloaded the wrong version :-p
The new downloaded version is free

Noel wrote:Okay.
I downloaded the wrong version :-p
The new downloaded version is free

Your previous version was also free, you only needed to place the key at the right spot. I had the exact same thing