i got these dell servers with redhat enterprise 5, which i want to run some virtual servers, using vmware, so can i run the same operating system which is on the physical server, on the virtual server? or do i need a new license for each virtual server i want to run?

well i guess you need to explain some more.
Question 1:
Yes you can. But there is a catch. if you are running x86 physical you cannot install x64 in VMWare. but if you are using x64 on your physical box then you can install both x64 and x86 in a VM slice.

Question 2:
Yes and No. If you are using a free distro then you do no need a license. If you are running M$ then yes you will. If you want to get updates via the RHN then you will also need a license for each vm. That being said you can try CentOS which is 99% the same as RH but allows free updates.
Also if you are tricky you can google how to update RH from the CentOS repos, but i would never suggest such a thing...

Do you really want to run in VMWare, or do you want to use something like the Xen hypervisor to run multiple instances of Linux? With VMWare I think you can only have 2 operating systems at one time and there is a noticeable performance hit for the system in the VM.

Oops - stoopid me - confusing products again. OK, OK, VMWare is a hypervisor like Xen.

okay thanks for the help
i got the vmware server installed and installed centos on it
now i need to be able to connect to the virtual server from the internet
so i configured the eth0 device on the virtual server:
address: x.x.x.171
subnet: 255.255.255.240
standard gateway: x.x.x.161

but thats not working, and if i set it to automaticly obtain an ip address it just gets a lan ip

the network configuration on the dedicated server which the virtual server is runnin on is:
address: x.x.x.162
subnet: 255.255.255.240
standard gateway: x.x.x.161

my ip addresses from 162 - 170 is in use, running dedicated servers and dracs

how can i make the virtual server connectable?

Ideally you would let your VM slice have an internal address and use NAT (network address translation) or PAT (port address translation) from your external firewall to forward the requests to the LAN address of the VMware slice.

Is your host server in a DMZ?


Internet

|---------------------|
| external firewall |
|---------------------|

DMZ [Server+VM slice]

|---------------------|
| Internal firewall |
|---------------------|

Local Area Network (LAN)

okay, i have set the virtual servers Network Adapter to NAT and redid the network configurations so it automatically obtains an network address

i do an ifconfig on the virutal server and this is what i get on eth0
inet adr: 192.168.237.128
bcast: 192.168.237.255
mask: 255.255.255.0

so i guess thats its lan address, but i cant connect to it from any of the psychical servers in the network, but the one which is running the virtual server, but i do not see it in network places.
and in the network places on the virtual server i see the SFTP login for the psychical server which it is running on, and i can connect to it fine. so its a little strange i cant connect to the virtual server from the other psychical servers, and im still not sure how to make the virtual server connectable, trough a real internet address?

this is how the network looks like

Internet

[some dell switch which the psychical servers is connected to, having address x.x.x.161 i think]
[the psychical servers, x.x.x.162 - x.x.x.165 + dracs x.x.x.166 - x.x.x.69]

so what i want is all the psychical servers to run 1 or more virtual servers, which are connectable in the lan and from the outside
and im not sure how to configure the Switch either, since i cant connect to it on x.x.x.161?

Not quite. Depending on the physical CPUs your system has, you can run a virtual x64 OS in an x86 VMWare. There's a small application on VMWare's web site which will check this for you.

How do I know, because I'm currently running SlamD and 64-bit Solaris in VMWare, which runs under Slack 12.1.

Cheers.

what is the network you are using? VMware options are bridged, local and NAT

you want to use bridged so your VM grabs a real address from the local lan (same network as the physical server)

the network adapter is set to NAT
if i change it to Bridged the virtual server will disable eth0

That is strange...

do you have dhcp client running on the vmware slice? what if you assign it an IP address manually?
It sounds like you have a DHCP server on your local LAN

well i got it to work now, i set the network adapter to bridged and assigned the right ips manually
then i could connect to it from outside the private network via ssh, and ping it.

i can also connect from the virtual server to other servers, via ssh and ping works too, but thats the only things .. things like the webbrowser, package manager etc. wont connect at all, i tried disabling the firewall on the virtual server, but that didnt work either.
but i can connect to the psychical servers vmware setup on port 8333, which is ofcourse open on the psychical servers.

i thought that it might the the firewall on the psychical server limiting the virtual servers access to the internet, but i tried to disable it completely, and the virtual server still wont connect to other services than ssh and vmware websetup on 8333.
what can the problem be?