Advantage in running a virtual machine
 

Hi folks,


Virtural box is new to me.
www.virtualbox.org

Its idea is not new to me. I'm also aware of Vmware but never testing it.

In my old days when I was running RH/Mandrake, etc. there were few applications running on Linux. Therefore I have to run "wine" installing Windows application on Linux box to keep me alive. Nowadays we have tons of application available on Open Source for Linux/Unix. Some of them you can't even find equivalent on Windows World.

I can't resolve what will be the purpose running several OS on the same PC (I don't run Windows). Even if I can build servers running on different OS on the same PC. What will be its advantage? The CPU resource has to be shared resulting in slowing down the speed of each server.

Please shed me somelight. Yours advice would be appreciated. TIA


B.R.
satimis

Porting the software
testing programs's in diferent OS
running different kernels.
having many virtual OS simultaneously

Supose that you have a system like AMD 3800, 4GB RAM, HD 300GB and you want to host about 100 websites.

Well, your machine is wonderfull for the job, so you can have a virtual machine running IIS, another running apache, another running some MTA and so on!

This is pretty good for a production enviroment, you take advantage of your entire hardware, also, you create an abstract layer between hardware and software. With VMWare, for example, you can change a virtual machine from one machine to another with a simple drag ´n drop operation, this is perfect for hardware manutention, upgrade and everything.

Well, there is a lot of good things in virtualization, I just mentioned an example!

[]´s, FMC!

Hi FMC,


Tks for your advice.


Whether to run each package, such as apache, mysql, php, etc. on its own platform? What will be the advantage? Can I run apache on CentOS, mysql on OpenBSD, php on Slack, etc.? OR the OS must be the same? How to connect them together?

About HD, do I need partition it first before installing the OS and packages? OR just keep it untouched and partition it when needed cutting the required size for use leaving the remaining portion untouched?

Could you please explain in more detail on abstract layer? TIA


Could you pls provide more detail on "you can change a virtual machine from one machine to another with a simple drag ´n drop operation". Tks.


B.R.
satimis

The advantage is that you can run Windows with IIS, apache on Linux and so on, also, if - for example - your mysql server start to take too much resources, it wont hang everything else. You can even restart the MySQL machine without stopping other services.

It will depend of the VM host software you´re using, but usualy you do not need to partition everything.

Lets imagine that you have 100 machines, all of then with VMWare pretty well configured and integrated. You have to change one machine by another becouse it is broken, you just drag´n´drop the VM to another machine and so you can do your manutention without stopping some client service.

[]´s, FMC!

I believe it also adds an extra level of security. Say you're browsing the internet from Windows using Internet Explorer. Even with up-to-date firewalls, antivirus and antispyware software it's still easy to get infected by enough viruses and spyware that the os would need to be reinstalled. If the infected os were running as a guest virtual machine the host would be unaffected.Unless you're hacked by something that can trace the IP address from the guest to your host.

HI FMC,


Tks for your advice.


I haven't run Windows for prolonged time. IIRC reboot is required if adding a software on it or even changing some config on the OS. On reboot other OS will also be affected. How to overcome this difficulty.


On installation, I suppose VMWare/qemu/VirtualBox goes first before the OS. If I'm wrong please correct me. Tks.


Sorry I'm not quite clear of your advice here.

Suppose one machine broken I need to re-install the OS. Whether install the new OS on another partition w/o config and drag-n-drop the old VM on it? In this way would the bug also be carried onto the new machine?


B.R.
satimis

Hi dracolich,


Tks for your advice.


satimis

Maibe you can give me a hint
 

<<Deleted>> the member has started a new thread with his question.

If you've got MS in a virtual machine on top of Linux, you just reboot the virtual machine.
Host is not affected.

And now there's Portable-VM's like slack and dsl, tomorrow, the world!

( http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=725812 )

( http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=725967 )