Virtualization

[Zhariak]

No threads on beyond about virtualization...

Just curious, how many of you out there use virtualization either at home or at work?

What products are you using? And what type of configuration do you have with disaster recovery, storage, etc...

[eblend]

At home using Hyper-V on Server 2008 R2 running on just a single rack mount server with local raid5 for the data.

At work we are running Vmware ESX 3.5 with HP FC SAN for storage, Flex10 for networking. Got about 22 ESX hosts in total.

Nothing for disaster recovery yet, though our production data center is at a remote location. We are looking into SRM in the next little while, and our next project is Vmware View which should be fun.

[Brendan_4g63]

I use VMware fusion on Mac OS 10.6
Works great for what I need it to do.


This ones free
http://gizmodo.com/5383982/how-to-vi...ny-os-for-free

I Share files in the Mac OS, then use time machine to back up content, and not backup the VMware image.

[TorqueDog]

Home and Work: VMware Workstation
Work only: Hyper-V, ESX Server

Hyper-V is a fair bit easier to redirect physical removable media amongst multiple machines.

[Wraith]

I use vmware

[D'z Nutz]

Oh my home computer/laptop (Macs) I'm using VMWare Fusion and at work (WinXP) I'm using VMWare Workstation.

I don't have any real disaster recovery, but if I'm doing anything drastic I may make a snapshot of my VM ahead of time (if I remember to).

[Zhariak]

What kinda setups do you guys have at home? Hardware, etc...?

[94CoRd]

I can see how using a virtual machine would benefit in a working environment. But I'm curious how it would benefit at home?

I don't have much experience with it, but I would like to give it a try. Any suggestions why it would be good at home?

Thanks

[claxx]

virtualbox

[TorqueDog]

Originally posted by 94CoRd
I can see how using a virtual machine would benefit in a working environment. But I'm curious how it would benefit at home?

I don't have much experience with it, but I would like to give it a try. Any suggestions why it would be good at home?

Thanks

Couple different reasons... every version of Windows since Windows 2000 Professional, I've tried on a VMware box first. I like to play with different OSes and this allows me that freedom. I learned Sun Solaris at home using a VM.

So:
- I can use different operating systems without having to stop what I'm doing on one, without having to own multiple machines.
- I can use VMware teams to test new technologies (I used this for a remote monitoring tool at work)
- I can fuck up the VM as much as I want to, and so long as the firewall is active and network access is locked down, viruses won't touch my other machines.


Having VMware is a great learning tool. Want to try a new version of Linux? Throw it on a VM. Tempted to run a beta or release candidate of Windows? VM box. Have legacy software that just won't run on your latest-and-greatest operating system? Veeeee-Emmmmm.

[eblend]

Don't forget snapshot capabilities, create a snapshot before you try something, if it fucks up just revert back, if its good get rid of teh snapshot.

I use snapshots at home all the time.

I personally have a domain controller with DNS and DHCP, a web server and an external DNS running on VMs. Higher utilization per a physical box is great ROI

[scary_perry]

I use VMware Fusion on my Mac quite a bit. It is a handy way to access my boot camp partition without rebooting. I use Win7 RC x64.

Windows need to be reactivated though every time I switch back and forth between VM and booting - as the VM has different virtual hardware than the Boot Camp machine. A minor pain.

I did a review of VM solutions on mac for www.notebookreview.com and settled on Fusion as the best. But Sun's Virtualbox is getting very good and is free.

[94CoRd]

Originally posted by TorqueDog
Couple different reasons... every version of Windows since Windows 2000 Professional, I've tried on a VMware box first. I like to play with different OSes and this allows me that freedom. I learned Sun Solaris at home using a VM.

So:
- I can use different operating systems without having to stop what I'm doing on one, without having to own multiple machines.
- I can use VMware teams to test new technologies (I used this for a remote monitoring tool at work)
- I can fuck up the VM as much as I want to, and so long as the firewall is active and network access is locked down, viruses won't touch my other machines.


Having VMware is a great learning tool. Want to try a new version of Linux? Throw it on a VM. Tempted to run a beta or release candidate of Windows? VM box. Have legacy software that just won't run on your latest-and-greatest operating system? Veeeee-Emmmmm.

So for example you would just use an XP (or other OS) image on the VMware station?

Originally posted by eblend


Don't forget snapshot capabilities, create a snapshot before you try something, if it fucks up just revert back, if its good get rid of teh snapshot.

I use snapshots at home all the time.

I personally have a domain controller with DNS and DHCP, a web server and an external DNS running on VMs. Higher utilization per a physical box is great ROI

What exactly is a snapshot?

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by 94CoRd
So for example you would just use an XP (or other OS) image on the VMware station?

Yes, that's the idea. Running an operating system within the operating system at the same time. I run Macs at home, but sometimes there's software that's only available on other OSes, so for reasons like that I have a Windows XP and Linux VM. At work I have a Windows desktop, but all my developing is done on Linux, so I run a Linux VM. It's great for running multiple operating systems at once.

Originally posted by 94CoRd
What exactly is a snapshot?

Basically a copy of your VM's state at any point in time. Have you ever installed/uninstalled something you wish you hadn't and wanted to go back to the way it was before? Or your computer gets taken over with viruses and adware and you can't seem to get rid of it, but it's a big pain in the ass to do a fresh OS and application install? With VMs, if you take a snapshot of your VM before you do anything drastic and it goes horribly wrong, you can just revert back to the snapshot and it'd be like nothing happened.


Another great thing about VMs: after you install your OS and all the software and have the settings just the way you want them, you can just copy the image to another computer or laptop and you don't have to set it up again. This is especially nice with my Linux VMs since I have all sorts of keybindings and SSH keys i don't want to set up all over again on different computers.

[Zhariak]

/me loves virtualization...

Make's me feel all fuzzy and warm inside. haha

[94CoRd]

Thanks a lot for the clarification / help.
Like I said, I've always been tempted to play around with it, but never really knew where to start.

Through school I can get Virtual PC 2007 for Free.

Would you recommend this program? or suggest VMware?

[eblend]

Originally posted by 94CoRd
Thanks a lot for the clarification / help.
Like I said, I've always been tempted to play around with it, but never really knew where to start.

Through school I can get Virtual PC 2007 for Free.

Would you recommend this program? or suggest VMware?

For basic virtualization you could use Virtual PC, its good to get your feet wet to so say, it sucks for performance

[Xtrema]

Can't beat performance of ESX. ESXi is free.

[Zhariak]

I'd say try to use the VMware line of products. Best for performance, and even though there are a few other products out there, if your wanting to learn virtualization I'd say VMware is the industry standard.

[Mibz]

I learned on VMWare and am pretty happy about it. Virtualization isn't a very hard concept once you start playing with it so I think VirtualPC is kind of a waste. I'd go straight to ESX.