Virtualisation

**thingie2** · #21 12th Oct 2008, 12:38

Ollie, just take a look on Ebay, there are a few there, but go for one that is unused, as then the product key will be valid, and defiantly not on another machine.

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #22 12th Oct 2008, 13:30

Sorry Dave.. it was more of a informational link than a "Hey buy from here" link, but still, I see your point.

And thanks thingie, I'm not to sure how serious I am that I'll do it.. but if I do Ebay'll certainly be my first point of call.

**thingie2** · #23 12th Oct 2008, 13:55

Ah, ok, could be interesting if you do, but of course it's your choice, as it's your money.

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #24 12th Oct 2008, 13:58

Yeah, well you know, when I have the money..

**thingie2** · #25 12th Oct 2008, 14:06

Yea, I suppose it is more of a thing that would be cool to do, but you don't rearly get around to it.

**Cew27** · #26 12th Oct 2008, 16:15

i never buy winxp/ 200 keys. i just nick the keys from my school pc's and ring up m$ telling them its mine hehe

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #27 13th Oct 2008, 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by thingie2

Yea, I suppose it is more of a thing that would be cool to do, but you don't rearly get around to it.

Thats the thing, I wouldn't need or even use most of them..
But if there was spare money lying around.. why not!

I'll get back to you if I do with screenshots etc.

**thingie2** · #28 13th Oct 2008, 09:44

you would also need a decent computer to run all those OS's simultaneously

**computeruler** · #29 13th Oct 2008, 11:03

wow much better than that windows thing

**serverguy** · #30 13th Oct 2008, 11:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cew27

i never buy winxp/ 200 keys. i just nick the keys from my school pc's and ring up m$ telling them its mine hehe

Which is completely illegal and would also get you expelled if your school found out.

Back on topic, virtualisation is pretty cool technology.

Its main use is on servers, and is often used for server consolidation.

The idea being that if you have a 15 of 4 year old P3 512Mb RAM that currently do all the different tasks you network require, it would be better to buy 4 decent servers and then virtualise the servers between two of them, and have the other two decent servers as failovers for the first.

The real beauty of virtualising is that the virtual host (software that does the virtualising) is always the same on whatever hardware you install it on.

This means, that if you primary server dies (hard drive crash whatever) you can just grab a brand new server of any spec, install the virtual host, and copy the virtual hard drives to it. Then just point the host to them, and you have all your servers working perfectly again.

So you can 'hot-move' your servers round to different hardware in a matter of minutes, rather than the hours it would normally take.

It is also good for backups, you can just take a snapshot of the virutal hard drive, and then to restore the backup just replace the current virtual hard drive with the backup.

Theres loads more one could write about it, and VMBox is not the only host virtual machine. Theres VMWare, Virtual Server, Virtual PC, Hyper-V etc etc.

Its also a really good way of testing things out, you can wreck haveck on a XP install, and wipe it back to new install standard in seconds.

I love it