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VM Newbie

F

Fangoria

n00b
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
Messages
23
Well, this isnt much of a help thread as it is more of a 'what do you use VM's for in a desktop'
i know in the server world VM's are used alot for VPS servers, however as of lately i see more
and more people running VM's in the desktop world, and was just curious as to what you all use them for?
I could see using it if you were in a linux desktop and had a VM for windows to play games..
Anyway, let me know what you all use them for i'm intrigued.
 
I use them at work for building images to deploy to our workstations and to test software compatibility issues before we upgrade OS's, IE versions, etc.
 
/usr/home said:
I use them at work for building images to deploy to our workstations and to test software compatibility issues before we upgrade OS's, IE versions, etc.
Click to expand...

+ drivers as well.
They work great for software testing. (I'm actually installing VS2010 Express in a VM as I type this :D)

Use for legacy equipment on newer workstations (running a VM of XP32 under the host 7x64bit OS) is another one. A lot of the older stuff either has no 64bit drivers or no Vista/7 drivers (even 32bit).

I'm trying to work in some self-learning on sysprep/audit mode and image building/deploying in WinPE using VM's as well.

One more thing we've used them for at my company is using VMware Converter to convert a running system into a VM and then running the VM and taking the physical machine offline, either for maintenance or retirement. We've already done this once with an old server (which is now completely virtualized), and we also did it recently when our app server BSOD'd in the middle of the night and then gave a few other warning issues that morning (possible bad memory, Dell warning about a 'cpu socket error'). We made a VM of that machine in case the server itself went down due to a hardware failure. (luckily it never did though....it's been fine since)

IMHO VM's are the future. At some point within the next year I'd like to possibly try to talk some of our higher ups into switching a lot of our equipment over to VM's and run everything on those. VM's are easy. If there's a malware infection, you delete the VM and restore a backup and in 10 minutes you're running again ~ no Windows updates to go through, no software installs, no driver installs, no migrating user accounts/files, etc. Leave the host OS alone. Basically install the host OS and the first app installed is VMware Player followed by an already-set-up VM and you're done. VM performance is so good at this point (and it'll only get better). I think it's not too far fetched to see VM's take over on a corporate level, at least on client machines. RDP/LogMeIn was the first big thing that has somewhat taken over; I think VM's will be next.
 
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testing..

it is cheaper for me to have a vmware workstation license and with my work rig being an i7 920 @ 4Ghz and 24G of ram running server set ups in a VM versus needing physical servers is cheaper and far faster for me....

and since i am virtualizing our environment, it is great for testing that as well...

for example i build out WDS images on a Vm and then send to the WDS or right now testing running Server 2012 in a VM on my desktop using a read only DC and such..
 
At work, we have an extensively virtualized environment (almost completely except for typical high i/o, and clients who brought in their own hardware). At home, I have a VMWare lab with three poweredge servers.

I still use VMware workstation to quickly test a powershell script or command string or IIS configuration. I have 3 workstation VMs: Server 2008, 2008R2, and Win7. From there, I can pretty much do any type of "quick" testing.
 
Thanks for the replies! I didnt think about what you could do with them much, but when i did think about what a vm could do i didnt think of them for testing purposes! Overall seems to be a pretty powerful tool in the work enviroment
 
Fangoria said:
Thanks for the replies! I didnt think about what you could do with them much, but when i did think about what a vm could do i didnt think of them for testing purposes! Overall seems to be a pretty powerful tool in the work enviroment
Click to expand...

Ram is just so cheap that it makes VMs a really powerful tool.
 
Like others have said testing out stuff.
Instead of loading windows 8(or any software) to see what its like, just load it into a vm, and erase when done. Nice and clean.
 
Well, i figured enough asking questions and to just try it out myself.
I am sure the free Oracle VirtualBox isint the best, but its free to learn
with!
 
VM's remind me of what it was like back in the old days: mainframes and dummy terminals

We are back to that point now... pushing desktops out, via VM's to thin clients
 
Fangoria said:
Well, i figured enough asking questions and to just try it out myself.
I am sure the free Oracle VirtualBox isint the best, but its free to learn
with!
Click to expand...

VMware Player is also free and arguably a lot better of a program than VirtualBox.

I've heard a lot of bad things about VirtualBox, specifically issues with it working right. I went straight for Player and have never had any problems with it.
 
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