I thought that originally but I've found there are strong reasons to run servers in an virtual, isolated environment. My knowledge is mostly VMWare but here are some reasons that I've come up with to use virtualization.
* Multiple virtual machines can share the same hardware with no interference. This allows many small machines to be consolidated onto a few large systems. VMWare also guarantees that each virtual machine is completely isolated from each other so if one has a problem it doesn't effect the others. * If two pieces of software don't work well together or require different versions of libraries that can't be installed on the same system could be installed on two virtual systems. * To back-up an entire running system is as simple as copying a folder. Also, virtual machines can be cloned. I cloned a completely configured 10 gig installation of Windows XP for someone in about 5 minutes. The install and configuration on the original took me over 2 hours. * While a virtual machine is running you can take a "snapshot" where at some point in the future you can revert the entire system to that snapshot. As an example, before deploying ServicePack 2 on every system, create a virtual machine and take a snapshot, then install the ServicePack and if there are any issues which can't be solved simply revert to the snapshot and try again. This saves the time of installing and configuring Windows before trying the ServicePack. * VMWare has a product called VMotion that allows you to move a virtual machine from one physical machine to another with no effect on connected users, that way if a physical server has too much load you can simply move the virtual machines around to accommodate. * For the administrator there is a web based user interface and a stand-alone interface to connect to the physical servers, this gives a graphical interface to administer all of the virtual systems. I hope this provides some ideas where virtualization can be useful. Robert Gatti -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David L. Penton Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 4:39 PM To: Dallas/Fort Worth ColdFusion User Group Mailing List Subject: and VPC...Re: [DFW CFUG] Free VMWare Server This also came up very recently... http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx Matt Woodward wrote: > Since this came up last night: > http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ > > Matt _______________________________________________ Reply to DFWCFUG: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists1.safesecureweb.com/mailman/listinfo/list List Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/list%40list.dfwcfug.org/ http://www.mail-archive.com/list%40dfwcfug.org/ DFWCFUG Sponsors: www.HostMySite.com www.teksystems.com/ _______________________________________________ Reply to DFWCFUG: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists1.safesecureweb.com/mailman/listinfo/list List Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/list%40list.dfwcfug.org/ http://www.mail-archive.com/list%40dfwcfug.org/ DFWCFUG Sponsors: www.HostMySite.com www.teksystems.com/
