The more time I spend with Server 2.x the more I think, vmware is trying to force us to use ESX(i) by rendering Server 2.x useless step by step.
I am testing 2.x since the beta and I use v 1.x in production enviroments since a very early rease (can't really remeber which) but I can't see any improvements.
V 1 is really nice when it comes to administration...The console is fast and intuitive, the vmrun commands are easy to use and the performance is OK.
With Server 2 this all changed.
The Web-UI is a pain in the axx and as with 2.1, vmware is also cutting support for the Infrastructure Client.
When I look at the posts here, many people have problems with the Web-UI since the Beta-times and nothing changes.
For me that means to get used to frequent UI hangs and to restart the mgmt Services.
Sometimes Web-UI doesn't work with Firefox and I have to use IE (and no, there were no config changes )
Today I was not able to create a VM because the f....ine config wizzard hangs when it comes to configure a HDD.
OK, today I had to remove a datastore w/o removing it in the Web-UI first....But I think this should not cause problems because even
this is not the standard procedure.
After restarting the UI I was not able to login for at least 15 minutes.....afterwards I was able to login again, but I took another 5 minutes to display the list of the VMs.
Now I wanted to remove the stale VMs which were located on the removed datastore....guess what happens!....riiiiight! UI hangs...mgmt restart et.al.
I hope I can remove these VMs by using the VIC but for this I have to download Server 2.0 because I installed vSphere client and removed all old clients w/o knowing I will need them for V 2.1
When it comes to startup of VMs, this takes ages to complete....On V1 on the same HW this was lightning fast but now It completes until 95% and then hangs for 5 Minutes.
Another "nice" feature is, that if you update to HW Ver.7 and updating the vmware tools Windows VMs have no networking because because a new NW connection is created and you will have to copy the old config to the no card via registry.And on linux hosts you will have to remove the allow-hotplug setting from network config to re-enable networking...OK, this might be OS related but it is ANNOYING and I did not encounter such problems till now!
One problem I also encountered is, that the Server looses the configuration and I have to run vmware-config.pl manually.
I don't know how this can be reproduced, but I think this is associated with crashes of the Web-UI.
Oh, and I don't run vmware server on an old/fancy HW-SW Combination...I'm with Centos 5.3 on an IBM x235 which runned Server 3.0 for a long time.
</RANT>
Vmware pleeease dump the WebUI and provide full support for Infrastructure client.
Vmware Server was (and I think it still could be) a great product, when It comes to flexibility...I can use virtually any storage backend as long it is supported by Linux.
And please bring back raw disc support, I see many people want this (including me)
Btw. in the meantime I've been able to delete the VMs....I "only" have to restart the mgmt-service after deleting one single vm.