What's the craziest thing you're virtualizing?

Captain Kirk

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2002
Messages
288
For about a year+ now, I've been virtualizing pfSense with VirtualBox. pfSense has the run of a quad port NIC I have in my "VM host." All ports are bridged to pfSense and it works like a champ. Port 1 links to my upstream, port 2 goes to my LAN switch fabric, port 3 will be used for an isolated unsecure VM/guest network, and port 4 is a spare. The biggest downside to this setup is having my router be a virtualized guest, but I've only had one major issue when I needed to upgrade the kernel on the host OS. I guess there's always the fear of a VM escape, but I don't see this as any different from someone owning pfSense itself.

What are you all virtualizing that you normally wouldn't?
 
I also virtualized pfsense. If you are running a hypervisor where you can do live migration, upgrading/rebooting the host is no big deal, since you just migrate pfsense to the other one (obviously need the network connections to look the same...) Nice thing about virtualizing is if an upgrade hoses the firewall, you can just roll back to the snapshot you (hopefully) took before doing the upgrade :)
 
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Windows 7 using Windows Media Center to record TV!

now thats interesting....

I have no experience with virtual machines, at all. So excuse my ignorance, but. Could I run the same virtual machine on 2 different computers on the same network? For example, if I had a desktop, and had a virtual machine on it with windows 7 and media center recordings etc, could my laptop access the files to boot said virtual machine and playback said recordings?

why all the hassle you ask? I have a desktop with windows 7 and MCE as a recorder. And of course anything recorded off of a premium channel cannot be watched on any machine other than the one that did the recording.
 
There's nothing I ~haven't~ virtualized except my gaming machine :p

A gaming machine is probably the "craziest" thing I've virtualized. I suppose also virtualizing a DRBD backed KVM instance so that I didn't actually have any redundancy on any level, but that was merely for testing.
 
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 so I could play my old Dos Command and Conquer, and Warcraft games.
Novell -sucked....
I've also virtualized my wife's computer. Getting tired of rebuilding her desktop. Also using SVGA so she can play Sims, Sims2 and Sim3 via view client..... Yay for offloading that crap..

Nicholas Farmer
 
now thats interesting....

I have no experience with virtual machines, at all. So excuse my ignorance, but. Could I run the same virtual machine on 2 different computers on the same network? For example, if I had a desktop, and had a virtual machine on it with windows 7 and media center recordings etc, could my laptop access the files to boot said virtual machine and playback said recordings?

why all the hassle you ask? I have a desktop with windows 7 and MCE as a recorder. And of course anything recorded off of a premium channel cannot be watched on any machine other than the one that did the recording.

I could do this with my HDHomerun. WMC doesnt even need to be running. Buuuuuuut that thing we're not supposed to talk about is better for watching TV.
 
It's always fun to bring up an NT4 BDC since you have to have a working nic as you install.
 
In a work environment we virtualized a vmware server. Yes, a VM in a VM. The guest OS was SCO Unix which nobody had a password to get in and given the highly proprietary nature of it, there was no way to gain access to the file system or anything. Originally it was P2Ved to VMware Server, eventually that was the only VM left on that server while everything had been running on ESX for a long time. Finally decided to P2V the VM server itself. Not even sure how they P2Ved it originally, maybe they just DD'ed the drive and got lucky that all worked. No such luck when we tried that in ESXi. Probably because the drive assignments changed like /dev/hda turned to /dev/sda or whatever is equivalent in unix.

To this day that VM is probably still running. It crashes every now and then and has to be rebooted. It runs the entire finance system for a hospital. I'm glad I don't work there anymore because the day that craps out for good is going to seriously suck for IT.

At home most of the stuff I virtualize is fairly standard. Minecraft server, and standard Linux VMs for the sake of separating tasks.

I've thought of virtualizing pfsense but I prefer keeping a firewall physical. I just feel safer that way.
 
now thats interesting....

I have no experience with virtual machines, at all. So excuse my ignorance, but. Could I run the same virtual machine on 2 different computers on the same network? For example, if I had a desktop, and had a virtual machine on it with windows 7 and media center recordings etc, could my laptop access the files to boot said virtual machine and playback said recordings?

why all the hassle you ask? I have a desktop with windows 7 and MCE as a recorder. And of course anything recorded off of a premium channel cannot be watched on any machine other than the one that did the recording.

Sounds like you have a CableCARD tuner like I do! I can't watch off the VM itself, since I don't have a video card passed through, so I use WMC Extenders exclusively to watch. It works great!
 
Ehh, there isn't anything I can think of that I "normally wouldn't".
I'm all for virtualizing any and everything.

1. My gaming box
2. My video camera surveillance server
3. Pfsense
4. FileServer
5. Cryptocoin miners and wallets
6. Various game servers - counterstrike - TF2 etc. etc.

Everything running happily on the box in my sig.
 
Ehh, there isn't anything I can think of that I "normally wouldn't".
I'm all for virtualizing any and everything.

1. My gaming box
2. My video camera surveillance server
3. Pfsense
4. FileServer
5. Cryptocoin miners and wallets
6. Various game servers - counterstrike - TF2 etc. etc.

Everything running happily on the box in my sig.

waht do you mean you're virtualizing your gaming box? Like passing through a VGA card?
 
<snip>
I've also virtualized my wife's computer. Getting tired of rebuilding her desktop. Also using SVGA so she can play Sims, Sims2 and Sim3 via view client..... Yay for offloading that crap..

Nicholas Farmer

Now there's a thought... I just keep a standard image to use when it gets toasted. I assume that you're passing through a video card for the graphics? What kind?
 
waht do you mean you're virtualizing your gaming box? Like passing through a VGA card?

Yes the Radeon in the sig is passed to a Windows7 VM that I do all my computing from. I just use a 50 ft HDMI cable that goes to my TV for video and audio and USB Hub to plug any devices in. There is no difference in the use. You can't tell its just a virtual machine.
 
I setup a virtualised Windows 98 OS to see if a problem I was having with Heroes of Might and Magic 3 was down to my Windows 7 config or the save game.
 
In a work environment we virtualized a vmware server. Yes, a VM in a VM. The guest OS was SCO Unix which nobody had a password to get in and given the highly proprietary nature of it, there was no way to gain access to the file system or anything. Originally it was P2Ved to VMware Server, eventually that was the only VM left on that server while everything had been running on ESX for a long time. Finally decided to P2V the VM server itself. Not even sure how they P2Ved it originally, maybe they just DD'ed the drive and got lucky that all worked. No such luck when we tried that in ESXi. Probably because the drive assignments changed like /dev/hda turned to /dev/sda or whatever is equivalent in unix.

To this day that VM is probably still running. It crashes every now and then and has to be rebooted. It runs the entire finance system for a hospital. I'm glad I don't work there anymore because the day that craps out for good is going to seriously suck for IT.

At home most of the stuff I virtualize is fairly standard. Minecraft server, and standard Linux VMs for the sake of separating tasks.

I've thought of virtualizing pfsense but I prefer keeping a firewall physical. I just feel safer that way.

VM inception! lol
 
Sounds like you have a CableCARD tuner like I do! I can't watch off the VM itself, since I don't have a video card passed through, so I use WMC Extenders exclusively to watch. It works great!

Also look into ServerWMC. I believe it will allow you to watch live TV like an extender would.

You can also do tuner sharing and give each computer that you want to watch live TV on a separate tuner.

I have a win7 WMC vm as well and it just transfers all my recordings to my Server 2012 R2 VM.
 
Also look into ServerWMC. I believe it will allow you to watch live TV like an extender would.

You can also do tuner sharing and give each computer that you want to watch live TV on a separate tuner.

I have a win7 WMC vm as well and it just transfers all my recordings to my Server 2012 R2 VM.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, only WMC and proper WMC Extenders will play/record copy-once content and I do a fair amount of watching on those channels. I'm kind of surprised the PlayReady DRM used to protect the TV recordings works in a VM though.
 
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, only WMC and proper WMC Extenders will play/record copy-once content and I do a fair amount of watching on those channels. I'm kind of surprised the PlayReady DRM used to protect the TV recordings works in a VM though.

Yep, I think that is the only reason people still need and use WMC. Fortunately my cable provider has pretty much everything as copy freely as far as I can tell

You do have to do this for the VM to work properly.

http://www.missingremote.com/guide/override-digital-cable-advisor-windows-media-center-7
 
Windows 7 using Windows Media Center to record TV!

I have Mythbuntu running as a dedicated MythTV backend hooked up to a Ceton InfiniTV6 Eth on mine. Works great.


Craziest (or silliest?) thing I tried was running Civ 5 in a Windows Vista guest (only Windows I had a spare key for) in order to host a pitboss server.

Limited GPU acceleration made it a limited success (only dedicated game server I have ever run that requires GPU acceleration...) but it was worth trying.
 
For about a year+ now, I've been virtualizing pfSense with VirtualBox. pfSense has the run of a quad port NIC I have in my "VM host." All ports are bridged to pfSense and it works like a champ. Port 1 links to my upstream, port 2 goes to my LAN switch fabric, port 3 will be used for an isolated unsecure VM/guest network, and port 4 is a spare. The biggest downside to this setup is having my router be a virtualized guest, but I've only had one major issue when I needed to upgrade the kernel on the host OS. I guess there's always the fear of a VM escape, but I don't see this as any different from someone owning pfSense itself.

What are you all virtualizing that you normally wouldn't?

People are too quick to criticize running pfSense as a router/firewall in a guest.

They say you expose your host to the network and it is insecure.

I've been doing it since my first ESXi server (it was actually the reason I tried ESXi, as my router broke and I already had a file server, but not enough hardware (or spare cash) to build a dedicated system).

I feel fairly good about the setup, especially since I direct I/O forward my dual port NIC to the pfSense guest, so the VMWare virtual networking component is not exposed to the outside world.

It may not be the most secure setup, but I'd take pfSense with a direct I/O forwarded NIC running as a guest in ESXi any day over any consumer router.
 
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, only WMC and proper WMC Extenders will play/record copy-once content and I do a fair amount of watching on those channels. I'm kind of surprised the PlayReady DRM used to protect the TV recordings works in a VM though.

I wanted to go with Windows Media Center guest on my ESXi box for my TV purposes when I first started up, but the lack of a software based extender I could install on my HTPC's kind of disappointed me and drove me away from that solution.

After some research I instead went with MythTV, which has been mostly good, but it isn't exactly the most robust software I've ever used. (I back up before EVERY package update, because things have been known to break easily)
 
Zarathustra[H];1041013287 said:
I wanted to go with Windows Media Center guest on my ESXi box for my TV purposes when I first started up, but the lack of a software based extender I could install on my HTPC's kind of disappointed me and drove me away from that solution.

After some research I instead went with MythTV, which has been mostly good, but it isn't exactly the most robust software I've ever used. (I back up before EVERY package update, because things have been known to break easily)

Yeah, not having a software based extender is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected since WMC is the only program that records copy-once content. I have the Ceton ETH 6 as well, and everything works great through extenders. Being able to run TV/storage/pfSense/pbx in a flash in one box makes me feel a lot better about spending a bunch of money on it :D
 
I had pfsense virtualized on a phenom 2 1090T until my internet speed went from 16Mbit down to 50. It then ate 100% cpu & I couldn't get full throughput.
 
Lets see crazy thing I currently virtualize? Windows Media Center 7 with 2 HDHomeRun Prime tuners (6 tuners total). Several XBOX360's and a Ceton Echo are around the house for media center extenders.

I also have 2 offsite servers that I virtualize MikroTik RouterOS on for site-to-site VPN's and firewall duty.

Crazy thing (at least for home) that I am working on is a hardware GPU accelerated VDI host for 6-7 desktops in the house. Going to use VMWare ESXi 5.1 on a whitebox with a NVIDIA Quadro GPU, VMWare Horizon View 5.2 and some zero clients. The zero clients will be a mix between a few EVGA PD02 zero clients (Teradici Terra1 based) with a single monitor and a couple Wyse P25 (Teradici Terra2 based) with dual monitors.

Currently we have 5 computers around the house of varying age and computing power. All the computers are used for light-duty computing and some fullscreen 720p+ video. Even the PD02 zero clients i am testing with right now (without the hardware GPU) come close to playing fullscreen video tolerably. The zero client setup will be much more compact and easier to manage.
 
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