Linux VMs For Everyone

Over at Newsforge, Grant Gross has written an interesting overview of the options available for hosting multiple Linux installations on virtual machines; interestingly, it's not just for those with the big bucks for high-end IBM hardware, though that's surely nice.

Comments

For privacy . . .

[acceleriter]

. . . even if you aren't running multiple virtual machines simulateously, applications like VMware (and possibly Bochs) are useful for creating read only, throwaway environments for when you do anything on the net you might not want your boss or someone who shares your computer to be aware of.

In particular, VMware's "undoable disks" are great in this regard.

Re:Imagine

[Webmonger]

The reason there's a value to virtual machines is because you can't buy half a computer [from reputable vendors!]. If you have four jobs that only require 1/4 of the resources of a modern PC, but they all need different security contexts, you must a) buy four servers or b) buy one server and run 4 virtual machines.

There's probably even some value in a beowulf cluster of virtual machines-- if you want to write and test cluster-based software when you don't have access to a cluster.

Linux VM RULE!, Tyr it if you havent youll LOVE it

[CDWert]

If youre hosting, you cant beat this solution

Folks over at Solucorp

Have made kernel patch and utilites to make this almost painless, as well as some precompiled kernels, (I would laways roll my own but ..)

This as I said kicks for hosting, its not just a chroot, and its not like the jail on BSD, its....well different.

This isnt somethign youre going to do on your desktop machine , its going to allow you to span resources, this is COMPLETLEY different from VMWare etc, for all the yahoos that are gonna say this has been around forveer.

After SEVERLY abusing our test server to hell an back starting 2-1 we are going to be offering hosting in this enviroment , we have clients that want their own playground but dont want the maintenece, some have semi-secure data theyre just no comfortable on a shared solution and cant quite justify a dedicated box, were already slated for 10 clients and with their current traffic and traffic times, they will all play very nicley on the same machine

P.S. LOAD up on the ram , and make sure to use SCSI , Low ram and Ide will work but start to bog under load, remeber you have 10 different Linux installations trying to access the disk at once.....