What do you use your vms for?

1. Work
2. Running different operating systems
3. Testing software
4. Test software upgrades, deployments, configuration changes

I use both VMware workstation with multiple VMs and VMware vSphere v5.5 with a single host and 4 Windows server VMs
 
The VMs on my desktop at work are for testing scenarios, project work for new services etc. All in VMware Workstation 10.

I don't have any VM's at home, that shit is just for fun.
 
Testing new OS's, 64 bit Office, old OS's that need to stay in stable configurations, etc.
 
Development work - hosting web and db servers, Internet Explorer VMs for testing, and testing or hosting software on distributions other than Ubuntu.

I primarily use VMware and VirtualBox (only for the IE vms).
 
I work under the principle of 1 service per OS install. I mainly work in Linux so licensing costs aren't a concern. The largest benefit is upgrades, in the rare case something goes wrong it doesn't impact everything.

To list:
DNS
Http server
VPN
Privoxy
Ftp
AP controller
CCTV system
PBX
Mail

Basically anything. VMS provide so much flexibility they are the way to go.
 
canna said:
I work under the principle of 1 service per OS install....
Click to expand...

I'm pretty much the same way. I do it because if one system goes down, only one system goes down.

vSphere 5.5 Cluster of 3 Dell R720s in HA and another site with 2 R610s in HA : Total of 19 VMs

Windows AD Servers
DNS
Linux Mail Server
BSD box running Spam Assassin, RAZOR, Pyzor, and doing RBLs
Few Linux web servers
Few windows web servers
Few applications servers
A few test VMs

edit - I also have Fusion on my MBP for support for my work's Windows environment. I do almost everything in Linux or Unix. and Workstation on my about to be replaced Precision 5500.
 
Web hosting control panel server
4x public DNS servers for hosting
3x web servers
2x email servers
Windows SQL server
MySQL server
3x private domains, each with 4 domain controllers (12 vm's total)
2x windows file servers
Veeam backup master
3x veeam backup slaves
Omnios+napp-it for home vm servers, shared lun via 4Gb FC
6x pfsense instances
Plex server
6x Windows 7 instances for VDI (horizon view)
Vcenter server
Windows media center
Horizon view broker

I'm sure that there is at least 1 thing missing. Yes, this is my home setup and it spans 4 sites.
 
Whatever Job you have bds1904, I need to switch from network engineering and do that. Spending over 15K for View must be nice. I recently looked at Horizon for converting all my office users into VDI and going to thin clients. Too damn expensive for the 40 office users I have.
 
Daedalus0101101 said:
Whatever Job you have bds1904, I need to switch from network engineering and do that. Spending over 15K for View must be nice. I recently looked at Horizon for converting all my office users into VDI and going to thin clients. Too damn expensive for the 40 office users I have.
Click to expand...

Vmug advantage is my friend. I saved about $14,700 or so I guess. :D
 
Hyper-V


Malware analysis, and testing of tools...


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
-ZFS based storage (Napp-IT)
-Win7 + Blue Iris/Security
-MySQL
-Redis
-Elastic
-Web/Apache
-4 VDI
-Testing Linux Configs
-Testing Software on Linux
-Testing MySQL

Planning to add Mail Server, Proxy, and maybe play around with AD.
 
Remoting into work. Have a Win 7 install under virtualbox that the sole purpose is for running Citrix stuff. Don't want Citrix crapping all over my system.
Was a good decision at the time, had to put it on the tablet later (not enough memory to run a VM) and wow.. took me several hours to clean up everything. Remove the startup entries? Too bad! it'll put them back! Had to very carefully neuter it.
 
Keljian said:
Tempted to spin up a Ubuntu server for testing/wordpress duties, and another for statistics reporting/heavy number crunching but I haven't gotten around to it and do most of that on my desktop. The server has plenty of spare cycles and ram to do it though as the processor is a i5-4570T (dual core + HT) and 32 gig of ram - I wanted high peak single thread, and low power.
Click to expand...

Personally i'd suggest Debian over Ubuntu server. More stable and less twitchy.
 
Windows7 VM to run NextPVR as my TV backend and streaming w/Tversity
Ubuntu VM to host website/forums/wiki/blog
pfSense VM for router/firewall duties
FreeNAS VM w/IBM M1015 passthrough for storage
vCSA VM to control everything

All on a single ESXi 6.0 host - FX8350 stock 4GHz, 32GB RAM
 
I have a vm that moves to all my new bare metal builds that contains all my email, word processing, documents, picture and other boring stuff. No need to clutter a new build and waist time install boring crap. I love testing new linux builds in a vm. I also do some industrial processor program installation, programming and loading using a vm. Software testing, program testing and other stuff that might clutter a bare metal build. I like my standard installations very simple. Anything I can run in a vm is done for that purpose.
 
For home use:
- vCenter
- Horizon View Connection Server
- 2x pfSense
- 2x Untangle (UTM, Bridge mode)
- 2x Domain Controllers
- File Server (Hosted off SAN)
- WSUS
- PBX
- Web Server
- Windows Media Center backend (ESXi has USB tuner as passthrough)
- Mac OS X 10.10 (Time Machine backups, etc Mac tasks)
- 4x View Windows 10 Desktops

I think that is about it.
 
Beta or testing OS's.
OS's that are installed for writing articles (keep a fresh install for the 'vanilla' screenshots).
Linux www servers (local network only) for dev work or for fun
File server/Media server (all in one... I'll change that in a future build).
Test OS's for malware/virus/etc.. Something I can wipe out and not be connected to the network.
 
For me 'vanderpool' was a godsend.

A microkernel that manages multiple kernels letting them all operate on one piece of hardware? What's not to love?

When I landed my first job I inherited a computer that ran some obscure software suite/application server on Windows 2003. I literally copied the drive with 'dd' to a lvm volume and it friggin booted and worked on Linux 3.x KVM.

I didn't have to learn some moronic tutorial to restore it if it fails. Kernel rootkit? Boom, isolated and nuked from the hypervisor thanks to total control of what's actually happening.
I'm waiting on cheap wireless tablet-like thin clients. No more lugging a laptop around the house, no more wires just to browse the internet.
Forward a digital signal from a surround-aware DSP to a receiver? no problem.
Same desktop/homescreen all around the house? Yes please.
Hardware upgrade? Seamless transfer of VM images to another medium on completely different HW :)
Need more cores? clicky click to assign them. More memory? Lemme worry about that and balloon/decrease allocation depending on demand.
 
At home? No vms really. At work about 200 vms. Have them setup in HA environment.
 
ironforge said:
At home? No vms really. At work about 200 vms. Have them setup in HA environment.
Click to expand...

Curious what you are running at work in 200 VMs?

Myself I am running Qubes with Xen over 17 VMs for isolation by task.
Separate Shopping, Banking, Email, separate website categories, wordpress, isolated network and firewall, eclipse, gpg, and disposable VMs.

ESXI All-in-one with Napp-IT ZFS, Server 2012 R2 file, backup fedora vm, ...

https://www.qubes-os.org/
 
smangular said:
Curious what you are running at work in 200 VMs?

Myself I am running Qubes with Xen over 17 VMs for isolation by task.
Separate Shopping, Banking, Email, separate website categories, wordpress, isolated network and firewall, eclipse, gpg, and disposable VMs.

ESXI All-in-one with Napp-IT ZFS, Server 2012 R2 file, backup fedora vm, ...

https://www.qubes-os.org/
Click to expand...

Specialty applications, that use a lot of time to crunch data.. Better to tie up a VM than the employees desktop.
HFAM (hydrological modeling)
JMP (statistical discovery software)
Plexos (Integrated Energy Model)

Test environments of all critical production machines.
We have duplicate SQL databases of the live copy. Perform any table changes, patches, etc, to the test VM first and let it run for a few days.

Remote support. Some companies need to VPN into our network. We let them RDP to a virtual machine. The firewall only allows them to get to the virtual machine. Then once on the virtual machine they can use the AD login we give them and we can control access with groups.

Servers, mostly windows. Create 2+ VM's and set them up in HA mode, so it will fail over to the other machine if something goes wrong. Don't like to put too many services on one box. If I have to restart a server I don't impact 2 or 3 other services. FTP, DNS, DHCP, AD, SQL, software deployment (sccm), patching, AV, etc.
 
smangular said:
Curious what you are running at work in 200 VMs?

Myself I am running Qubes with Xen over 17 VMs for isolation by task.
Separate Shopping, Banking, Email, separate website categories, wordpress, isolated network and firewall, eclipse, gpg, and disposable VMs.

ESXI All-in-one with Napp-IT ZFS, Server 2012 R2 file, backup fedora vm, ...

https://www.qubes-os.org/
Click to expand...

Runs on 160 physical cores with 2.25TB ram.

Creating/testing software and os deployment packages.
Creating app-v deployments.

Specialty applications, that use a lot of time to crunch data.. Better to tie up a VM than the employees desktop.
HFAM (hydrological modeling)
JMP (statistical discovery software)
Plexos (Integrated Energy Model)

Test environments of all critical production machines.
We have duplicate SQL databases of the live copy. Perform any table changes, patches, etc, to the test VM first and let it run for a few days.

Remote support. Some companies need to VPN into our network. We let them RDP to a virtual machine. The firewall only allows them to get to the virtual machine. Then once on the virtual machine they can use the AD login we give them and we can control access with groups.

Servers, mostly windows. Create 2+ VM's and set them up in HA mode, so it will fail over to the other machine if something goes wrong. Don't like to put too many services on one box. If I have to restart a server I don't impact 2 or 3 other services. FTP, DNS, DHCP, AD, SQL, software deployment (sccm), patching, AV, etc.
 
Last edited:
In my case for home use:

VM 1 (Active Directory, DNS) MS 2012 R2
VM 2 LYNC MS 2012 R2
VM 3 Terminal MS 2012 R2
VM 4 Debian - Cacti
VM 5 CentOS - Centreon
VM 6 PLEX (MS 2008)
VM 7 WIN XP
VM 8 MS SQL SRV MS 2012 R2
VM 9 vCenter MS 2012 R2
VM 10 NAKIVO Backup MS 2012 R2

soon:

VM 11 - Asterik linked with Lync. Free calls over GSM network.
VM 12 - VMware Horizon View
VM 13 - Debian / team viewer terminal server (remote sessions)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top