What Version of VMware
(Note: Extracted from various SCO Newsgroup postings.)
VMware produce software that allows you to 'Virtualise' your PC - that is, run one (or more) operating systems on the same PC.
Virtualisation has many advantages, the main one being the ability to run older O.S.'s on modern hardware. The Host O.S. provides access to hardware.
There are two main VMware offerings:
- VMware Server - This was for a while was the only free option, it ran on
either Microsoft Windows or Linux.
As it turned out, VMware Server was never the most popular of VMware's products. It is now "end of life" (see small comment "*VMware Server was declared End Of Availability on January 2010. Support will be limited to Technical Guidance for the duration of the support term." at http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/general/index.html). In detail, it shows that general support for VMware Server 1.x ended on 2010-03-23, and 2.x ends on 2011-06-30. - VMware ESXii
ESXii (current official name is "VMware vSphere Hypervisor(TM)") is far more popular than Server ever was. This is the free version of vSphere (nee ESX), VMware's bare-metal full hypervisor. One of the FAQs at http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/faq.html discusses Server vs. ESXi. That URL also leads to the rest of the materials about ESXi. As ESXii is the current support option we would recommend that version 4.0 or 4.1 should be used. If you are running an earlier version 3.x then upgrade to version 4.x.
What about SCO 507V
The SCO OpenServer 507V family are recent introductions to the SCO family - however while they are optimised to take advantage of Virtualisation the licensing model SCO have in place is a little restrictive and we cannot recommend this route at this time.
The following 507V comments are for information only.
OSR507V includes VMware Tools, which is a good benefit; unfortunately not available without the subscription model :-(
OSR507V 2.0.0 adds one very significant benefit: you are no longer restricted to the "virtual appliance" model. It is also available as a supplement to be installed onto your existing virtualized OSR507 systems, thus adding VMware Tools and whatever else SCO has done. But still, of course, under the subscription licensing model.
What Versions are Supported
It gets very unclear as to what version is supported by whom?
See below for full details. In a nutshell, VMware only support OSR 5 and Unixware 714, SCO will support OSR 507V.
We do not like the 507V option due to licensing restrictions - OSR 6 is not supported by either and our own tests did show problems.
While you can mix and match, we will recommend using:
What is Supported
VMware's official guest OS support list is at: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/pdf/VMware_OS_Compatibility_Guide.pdf
I take SCO's support statements from the OSR507V 1.0, 2.0, and 2.0 upgrade documentation, respectively at:
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/openserver507v/507v/iso/openserver507v_v100vm/osr507v_vmware_1.0.0_GSG.html
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/openserver507v/507v/iso/openserver507v_v200vm/osr507v_vmware_2.0.0_GSG.html
ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/openserver507v/507v/other/openserver507v_v100sup/osr507v_upgrade_2.0.0_GSG.html
with additional details interpolated from:
http://www.sco.com/ta/127584
VMware's list:
| SCO OS | VMW platforms |
|---|---|
| ======================= | ========================================== |
| OSR506 | ESX/ESXi 4.0, 4.0U1, 4.0U2, 4.1; Server(*) |
| OSR507 + MP5 (required) | ESX/ESXi 4.0, 4.0U1, 4.0U2, 4.1; Server(*) |
| UW711 + MP5 (required) | ESX/ESXi 4.0, 4.0U1, 4.0U2, 4.1; Server(*) |
| UW714 + MP4 (required) | ESX/ESXi 4.0, 4.0U1, 4.0U2, 4.1 |
| SMP: OSR506/507 up to 4-way on ESX; UW7 up to 8-way on ESX | |
| (*) "experimental" support under VMware Server 2.0.1, 2.0.2 | |
and SCO's list:
| SCO OS | VMW platforms |
|---|---|
| ======================= | ========================================== |
| OSR507V version 1.0 | ESX/ESXi 3.5, 4.0; Workstation 6.5.[23] for Win |
| SMP: no | |
| OSR507V version 2.0 | ESX/ESXi 3.5, 4.0, 4.1; Workstation 7.x |
| SMP: ESX/ESXi 4.0 only; CPU limit not stated (#) | |
| [ OSR507 (not-V) (@) ] | |
| [ OSR600 (@) ] | |
| [ UW714 (@) ] | |
(@) http://www.sco.com/ta/127042 claims availability of "tailored Support Services ... on selected VMware platforms" but predates OSR507V, so I don't know if this still applies. Of course money talks: if there are enough 0's in your eyes then anything will go...
The closest points of contact are on ESX/ESXi 4.0/4.1 -- but SCO says "V" required, while VMware hasn't tested "V"!
In my experimentation, OSR507V 1.0 offered very little software benefits over a fully patched 507+MP5, other than a partial port of VMware Tools (see http://www.sco.com/ta/127360). The main benefits appear to be time sync (guest time is stable) and soft power operations (VM platform can gracefully shut down the guest).
OSR507V 2.0 adds some significant benefits, fixing several guest panics and a pernicious source of virtual disk I/O errors. Its tools package adds the balloon driver (ESX can "borrow" memory back from the guest if you have provisioned the guest with more RAM than it really needs).
There are no vendor agreements between VMware and SCO, and it has yet been tested whether VMware will treat OSR507V as a sufficiently similar variant of OSR507 + MP5 (the officially supported combo) to be supported. I imagine that in practice it would be accepted up to a limit. If your issue seems like it might be specific to the differences between 507 "classic" and 507V, you might get requested to demonstrate it on classic 507 + MP5.
Hrdware
I don't see mention in any of the published documents from either SCO or VMware, but this is very important: if you intend to run any SCO OS -- any flavor of OpenServer or UnixWare -- on any VMware platform, make sure that the CPUs support *nested page tables* and that your chosen VMware platform supports it on that CPU. In practical terms this means: (1) CPU must either be AMD >= Barcelona (late 2007) or Intel >= Nehalem (late 2008); (2) ESX 4.0 or later, and I believe Workstation 7.0 or later, or Fusion 3.0 or later.