February 14, 2014 at 2:05 pm
I use Parallels on a Mac Air, one Windows VM for email and docs and personal stuff, one for presentations, and one for small development projects. I also have a "server" running ESXi free edition for when I need more room. I use Chocolatey for installing most of the tools I use, reduces the pain of a new image quite a bit.
February 14, 2014 at 2:06 pm
Production and test VM's use VMWare ESXi hypervisor (legally free for use as long as you don't do certain things, one example being rent out entire guests) on a whitebox; those are all Linux and FreeBSD flavors for licensing reasons, with PostgreSQL for a databse layer.
VMWare Player for development VM's, and MSDN licensing for the guest Windows OS and SQL Server for those development VM's I use.
VMWare Workstation for some development at work, also with MSDN licensing for the guest Windows OS and SQL Server for development.
A little Hyper-V at work; not nearly as good as VMWare.
VMWare vCenter for production at work, with the usual EA agreement licensing.
VMWare ESXi is the bomb - you can set up vSwitches and then use pfSense or Monowall as a guest to act as all-up firewalls between vSwitches, and only one vSwitch attaches to each physical network interface.
February 14, 2014 at 4:22 pm
Work I have my local machine and a Virtual Server on our development environment. At home I have just my local PC. However I run between 6 and 8 cloud servers for my work and another company website. Not a virtual at home, but elsewhere yes.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
February 17, 2014 at 6:24 am
I've been using VM Ware desktop for a few years now, for all the reasons everyone is talking about.
-You don't have to rebuild your development stack every time you get a new machine.
-You can copy the VM to an external drive and run it on another machine in a pinch.
-You can P2V a clients machine and take a copy home with you for testing
-Upgrading or adding new tools is worry free, since you can take a snapshot before the upgrade/install. If it winds up hosing the system you can revert back and be back up and running in a few minutes. This is a biggie for me.
-Laplink PCmover works well for moving stuff from one VM to another. I recently (finally) upgraded my XP dev environment to Win 7. Laplink did most of the heavy lifting, however, it did not move MS Visual Studio. Had to reinstall with a new key for that one.
Very happy with VMs for dev work. My machine is an i7 with 12 gigs of ram. More would be better, next box will have at least 32
Mike
February 17, 2014 at 6:45 am
Sid Childers (2/14/2014)
What do you (and others) think is a minimum amount of RAM to make hosting a VM or two viable?
IMHO, at least 8gb RAM. 16gb is optimal, and 32gb is perfect.
As much as you can (afford) really ... I used to get away with 1GB XP VM's for most things with a few on 2GB and some simple test ones on 512KB ... but good old MS keeps ramping up the size of things so some of my VM's are 4GB now - so on desktop I have 32GB and my new notebook (that I am just about to purchase) will have 16GB (there are a few 32GB capable notebooks by they blow the budget).
Also don't forget cores ... I use a quad core i7 with hyper threading making it look like 8 CPU's this allows me to have 6 to 8 VM running at a time without much grief.
James Horsley
Workflow Consulting Limited
February 17, 2014 at 7:38 am
v.collazos (2/14/2014)
Rod at work (2/14/2014)
Mauricio N (2/14/2014)
I've used VMWare Player (now Player Plus) and VirtualBox. Both are good, unfortunately it's not so easy to change from one to another (I've tried this week).With a PC with 16 GB Ram as minimum you can have several VMs running without problem.
You've brought up a point which I don't know the answer to, and that's how much RAM the host PC should have, in order to handle VM's. Here at work I've got a PC with 16GB if RAM, just like you said you have. But at home, well not so much. What do you (and others) think is a minimum amount of RAM to make hosting a VM or two viable?
I have 8Gb Ram, and can use 3 VM at the time, one xp, one 7 pro, one server 2008
I setup each one with 2Gb of Ram,
Generally is rare that I use more than 2 VM at the time, but when I do my RAM is close to aneurism
I gonna update to 16Gb to be fresh
Thank you for this feedback!
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
February 17, 2014 at 8:02 am
If logging into a client or employer managed VM using VPN and Remote Desktop is an option, then that's nice.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 20, 2014 at 7:48 am
I run Windows VMs in VMware Player on Linux. Best of both worlds for a cross platform developer/admin.
March 22, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Have played with Virtual Box and recently I managed to get a DC, + 2 SQL 2008 R2 cluster nodes all running Win2008R2, but I only have 8GB on my T420s and it was really slow and the DC failed periodically. I think my T420s will take 16GB RAM but not seen this for sale anywhere yet.
At the moment I have a HP Proliant Microserver N54L and I have 16GB RAM, x2 WD 1TB drives and currently I have installed VMWare ESXi 5.5 and looking to try same as above (DC+2nodeSQL cluster). Am having a few issues with the storage and I am following TinkerTry: http://www.tinkertry.com/installvsphere55/[/url]
Once I have that done I will try the same with hyper-v.
Then start all over again with SQL 2012. 😀
I love being a geek. :smooooth:
qh
March 24, 2014 at 8:37 am
quackhandle1975 (3/22/2014)
Have played with Virtual Box and recently I managed to get a DC, + 2 SQL 2008 R2 cluster nodes all running Win2008R2, but I only have 8GB on my T420s and it was really slow and the DC failed periodically. I think my T420s will take 16GB RAM but not seen this for sale anywhere yet.
Assuming you mean a Lenovo Thinkpad T420, you could try any of these DDR3 8GB PC-10600 1.35v SODIMM modules - NO GUARANTEE whatsoever, but g.Skill, Crucial and Corsair have all done very well for me.
Make sure to update your BIOS first!
March 24, 2014 at 11:23 am
Nadrek (3/24/2014)
Assuming you mean a Lenovo Thinkpad T420, you could try any of these DDR3 8GB PC-10600 1.35v SODIMM modules - NO GUARANTEE whatsoever, but g.Skill, Crucial and Corsair have all done very well for me.Make sure to update your BIOS first!
Thanks for the tip, I do mean the T420s
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t420s/[/url]
Like the 420 but slimmer and lighter.
qh
March 26, 2014 at 11:04 am
I have a T430, 16GB, and it works well for me. Have 2-3 VMs working at a time.
March 27, 2014 at 11:01 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (3/26/2014)
I have a T430, 16GB, and it works well for me. Have 2-3 VMs working at a time.
Can I ask you what memory make/type you have in your T430?
Cheers
qh
March 27, 2014 at 11:10 am
quackhandle1975 (3/27/2014)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (3/26/2014)
I have a T430, 16GB, and it works well for me. Have 2-3 VMs working at a time.Can I ask you what memory make/type you have in your T430?
Cheers
qh
That's a good question. I want to say I got one 8GB stick from Lenovo when I bought it and then got another from Crucial? I usually buy from them. It's possible I just got it from Lenovo
March 27, 2014 at 11:24 am
Crucial have a compatibility tool that will list modules with guaranteed compatibility - from that it looks like the T420s only supports 8GB total as 2x4GB
DDR3 PC3-12800, DDR3 PC3-10600, DDR3 PC3-14900
Memory Type: DDR3 PC3-12800, DDR3 PC3-10600, DDR3 PC3-14900, DDR3 (non-ECC)
Maximum Memory: 8GB
Slots: 2
I would double check with Lenovo though
James Horsley
Workflow Consulting Limited
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