This week’s TechRepublic poll ask which virtualization software is the

best: VMware, Virtual Server, or Xen. Starting Monday morning, you can

take the poll on the TechRepublic front door and then join the discussion.

In my experience, VMware does the best job of hardware emulation. I’ve

run into the fewest installation problems when installing a variety of

operating systems into VMware virtual machines. However, using the

default settings in VMware, the virtual machines often drag in

performance. This can be enhanced with some tuning.

By contrast, Virtual PC (even before Microsoft bought it) has typically

caused me some installation problems, but once you have a virtual

machine up and running, it tends to perform a little better and is more

usable than VMware’s default performance.

I’ve hasn’t used Xen yet, but I’ve heard some good things about it, especially Virtual Iron.

I’d love to hear the experiences that other IT pros have had with these virtualization products.