MS Server 2003 on Parallel???

According to the specs, Parallel can run Server 2003. Has anyone tried this? What kind of performance are you getting?

My dream setup Mac Pro running OSX with Parallel running Server 2003. This would allow me to develop on a single machine without messing around with our main Server 2003 config (AD + various DB Servers).

While on the subject, has anyone tried running the free VMWare Server on a Parallel environment? Now that would be just a little funky.

 

I actually installed Server 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 twice to run an Exchange cluster for testing ...
I am not sure about Database server though .. I did not try it since I don't really have a chance to test it ... MySQL works fine but I guess its not what you want

 

Actually MySQL is one of the database that I need to test, the other is Filemaker Pro Server. Oracle would be nice too. What kind of speed were you getting? Was there any significant slowdown?

Thanks

 

Well .. Exchange worked as it should be .. but since I don't use it for production with out few thousand user, I cannot really say if and how it works all the way through .. I can tell you that working with the machine, I mean the operation system itself, works as it should .. no slow mouse movements (as you sometimes experience on certain vmware products until you installed their tools) etc. And in regards to MySQL : I have a forum backup running of a vbulletin forum with about 1000 member and 200.000 posts which also seems to run as usual ... but here again, I am the only "browser" since the server is not accessible from the WWW ....

If you NEED to run virtual machines in production (due to the costs of hardware), go for VMWare GSX or even as we do here with several hundred virtual machines : ESX ... I would consider Parallels as consumer product which runs small applications. If you want to test Oracle or other server platforms (I am also working with Form Server here for example) its fine .... since you just TEST it .. speed shouldn't matter really as you should know the real, production requirements of the software anyway .....

I seriously don't know how to explain it better

If you just want to test the installation, testing products, use it, if you need performance tests, don't

The reason I use Parallels instead of VMWare is simply the fact that I am working on Mac in the moment and VMWare is a bit "big" to run with a decent speed on a laptop

 

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. This is for a development environment not production.

I will be trying out VMWare (unfortunately Parallel's version won't be ready for the immediate future) once I get a new dual CPU dual cores server box. I've been reading about some users installing Server 2003 on a Mac Pro box and since I can't find anything comparable for the price I too am seriously looking at using a Mac Pro box to run Server 2003. Initially in testing but with the intention of using it in Production.