Point of a VM

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ng4ever

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Feb 18, 2016
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This may sound like a stupid question but what is the point of a Virtual Machine?
 
Test out Linux distros within your desktop instead of having to find a drive to install a fresh OS into.

Set up an entire virtual network that you can use.

Useful for running questionable software without trashing your OS.
 
I do computer repair and often provide support for homes and small businesses. I keep VM's of all the reasonably current OS's we support, so that if I have to walk someone through a process over the phone, I can fire up the appropriate OS without interrupting anything else I'm doing.

On the server side of things, it also has multiple uses. Because your OS is essentially detached from your hardware, it makes hardware migration, expansion, and backups/snapshotting much easier.
 
Depending on an organization's needs, a smaller-than-otherwise number of physical boxes can host the needed number virtual servers, reducing costs and management overhead, for example.

If a physical host were to go down, its guests can be migrated to another host with minimal downtime.

If you were to eventually upgrade the hardware, you can also migrate guests without the downtime or client configuration required of building their replacement from the ground-up.

My experience is overwhelmingly with VMWare, so it was pretty cool to be able to build a Windows Server VM on my MacBook using Fusion and migrate it to a running server when I was sure it was ready.
 
I use them for various things, one of the biggest is I have a anti virus machine which services my computers running windows 7 and older so they still have AV support. as well as other things such as I have a machine for backups offline, a minecraft host, teamspeak server, machine for torrenting so I dont mess up other machines, windows 10 so I could test installation and such.

THey have many uses, oh I forgot I also run my router on a VM
 
ChRoNo16 said:
I use them for various things, one of the biggest is I have a anti virus machine which services my computers running windows 7 and older so they still have AV support. as well as other things such as I have a machine for backups offline, a minecraft host, teamspeak server, machine for torrenting so I dont mess up other machines, windows 10 so I could test installation and such.

THey have many uses, oh I forgot I also run my router on a VM
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How exactly do you run your router on a VM please?
 
DrLobotomy said:
To run a separate different OS within your OS.
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ng4ever said:
What is better Virtual Box or VMware Workstation ?
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Whichever one makes more sense to you. Virtualbox is easier to understand and work with as a single entity like on a workstation. VMware is better for a corporate environment where many VM's will be used and managed.
 
ng4ever said:
How exactly do you run your router on a VM please?
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My physical server has 4 network cards built in, so I have a Pfsense virtual machine that uses two of them, one for LAN, one for WAN, and then the other two are the other connections for the rest of the machines.
 
To consolidate hardware in dense environments and get the most bang for the buck out of hardware. You can run 50 or more VM's on one server rather than have 50 separate servers.
 
bigdogchris said:
To consolidate hardware in dense environments and get the most bang for the buck out of hardware. You can run 50 or more VM's on one server rather than have 50 separate servers.
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Caveat. Yes you CAN. You have to make sure that you actually have a hardware setup that can HANDLE that sort of load.
VMs encourage efficient (even parsimonious) distribution of resources like CPU and memory to guest hosts. You run with exactly what you need to get the job done and not an iota more.

Usually, for people just starting to learn about VMs, the hardest thing to get right is your storage system. Running VMs off local individual SATA drives will kinda work for a small, not-very-dense setup. But performance is usually someplace between "I can live with it" and asstastic. If you're implementing an actual, working environment, you want something much more fault tolerant and performant.
 
Chas said:
Caveat. Yes you CAN. You have to make sure that you actually have a hardware setup that can HANDLE that sort of load.
VMs encourage efficient (even parsimonious) distribution of resources like CPU and memory to guest hosts. You run with exactly what you need to get the job done and not an iota more.

Usually, for people just starting to learn about VMs, the hardest thing to get right is your storage system. Running VMs off local individual SATA drives will kinda work for a small, not-very-dense setup. But performance is usually someplace between "I can live with it" and asstastic. If you're implementing an actual, working environment, you want something much more fault tolerant and performant.
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I'm not talking about on a desktop PC ... I'm pointing out there's more to virtualization than some guy running a linux distro on his windows PC.
 
I have a Windows 10 computer with a Linux VM, Windows 7 VM, and a Mac OS X VM. I use the Linux VM for banking and for experiencing what all the Linux fuss is about. The Windows 7 VM is for installing software that I just want to try out, or for browsing using my VPN. I used to own Apple computers so the Mac OS X VM enables me to run a couple pieces of OS X software I still use. I think this runs counter to the OS X TOS, but, hey. I use VMWare Workstation. The snapshot feature is great: if I mess something up I just revert to an earlier snapshot to restore things to where they were previously.
 
bigdogchris said:
I'm not talking about on a desktop PC ... I'm pointing out there's more to virtualization than some guy running a linux distro on his windows PC.
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Yes, and I was pointing out that there's more to virtualization than simply plonking down a machine and firing up 50 VMs.
Well, there is unless you LIKE shitty virtual performance.
 
I use a VM for a 'sandboxed' machine. If I need to visit a site, open a file, etc. that is suspicious, I'll do it on the VM. If it's infected, it's easy to kill that VM and roll back to the latest snapshot. That, or I get an infected machine to play with and learn more about the malware.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Why do I smell this as a homework question?>

Shieet theirs a FAQ in this sub-forum on virtualisation that would cover 95% of the OP's question:

https://hardforum.com/threads/faq-virtualization-what-is-it.1366895/
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Not to mention knowledge bases from vendors, FAQs, and communities that span basically every single corporate environment. The amount of information on virtualization is virtually unlimited (zing). These types of posts really bother me because it would have been a really easy Google search that gave the OP easy to understand examples and explanations. It's not like he's looking for some kind of archaic or cryptic open source solution to a niche problem.
 
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