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ECIT-2
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Living in a VM (bubble?) Reality Check.

I wanted to ask the forum if it hasn't already been asked, the pros and cons in living in a VM(s). If this topic has been discussed, please send me to the right source.

The nature of my question is, is it realistic for a home user with a decent know how and some cash, to live inside a VM for various purposes?

I have a Macpro 4 core & a drobo S & 7 gbs of ram. Over the last 12 yrs, I've learned to master the pc and I'm doing ok mastering the mac via terminal and what not. I'm not a programer, nor and IT specialist. Just a a guy in the graphic arts industry with various needs and good technical know how. My experience is that, I love to check out new software to make my work & life better, only I feel its necessary to sandbox those experiences.

When I work in a corperate inviroment, I'm always amazed how well a machine is maintained. My theory has been that as a work station, it has limited functionality (ie just a office machine or just a graphic arts machine, maybe a little of both). At home, my machines have everything (a diagnostic machine, home entertainment, etc) and it I frequently run into system issues (On a mac its cache files, kernel panics, finder crashes, PC its registry Bloat, DLL crap, lousy programers and corperate indifferance etc.) So you know where I'm going with this.

On the other hand, I do feel some performance issues with VMs (in graphics), the storage overhead, and I guess I need to streamline my setup so that I don't lazy and impatient to launch a vm and do my setups & work right in there. Am I missing anything?

Is it realistic though? Whould I (we) be better off with just 1 vm for say essential needs like PC only stuff and just use shadow backups on both the mac and PC? Should I be waiting for the day where VMs are in the cloud as a service where a corp with a data center will do a better job that what I can at home?

Thanks,

EC

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WoodyZ
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I read your post however I'm not going to address it point by point although I will say this... Only you can determine if Virtualization is right for you!

Personally and Professionally I would not what to go back to when Virtualization wasn't available on the Desktop nor could I do what I do as easily, efficiently and cost effectively without it. My professional needs require it and my personal needs make use of it.

As one of the saying go, one screwdriver doesn't fit all screws... so in turn I'll say... one computer doesn't always fit one's needs and virtualization can be a cost effective way of extending the capabilities of a single computer.

Is it right for you? Only you can answer that question! Smiley Happy

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WoodyZ
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I read your post however I'm not going to address it point by point although I will say this... Only you can determine if Virtualization is right for you!

Personally and Professionally I would not what to go back to when Virtualization wasn't available on the Desktop nor could I do what I do as easily, efficiently and cost effectively without it. My professional needs require it and my personal needs make use of it.

As one of the saying go, one screwdriver doesn't fit all screws... so in turn I'll say... one computer doesn't always fit one's needs and virtualization can be a cost effective way of extending the capabilities of a single computer.

Is it right for you? Only you can answer that question! Smiley Happy

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RParker
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Should I be waiting for the day where VMs are in the cloud as a service where a corp with a data center will do a better job that what I can at home?

On the one hand, yes, on the other hand no.

At home you have many users (sometimes) and a corporate world there is a real need for VM's (power savings, space savings, server don't need console /

monitor, single purpose machines, etc...).

In a car you have things you wouldn't normally have like sattelite, CD players, leather seats.. things you won't find in a corporate car just basic necessities, so corp machines are NEED driven, the need to be efficient and more secure, if for nothing else users cannot be trusted, because they have no vested interest in cleaning up, turning things off.. etc.

At home you are in control, more spread out, and things have more fluff.. your media server will degrade your exerience if you run it in a VM. Corp machines don't need high end graphics, and nicer look, at home they do.

So VM's are great, make things more efficient, but they don't have hardware access which will severely limit your options (graphic cards, games, sound, performance).

Besides who wants to manage that VM environment, kids have their machines, you have yours, everyone can tailor their own settings.. NOBODY wants to be TOLD how to make things look at a certain way.. VM's make people feel constrained. Home computers are typically cheap and simple, therefore NOT VM worthy either.. so the experience will be even less responsive than corporate.

therefore you can do what you want, but I will never run a series of VM's in my house.. that's crazy. I have a laptop, a gaming machine (highest performing machine, not going to sacrifice to host VM's), and a few multi purpose printing, search machines. I have no need to consolidate, it's how I like it. I certainly do NOT want to curtail the perform, which I can tell you no matter WHAT you do.. VM's do NOT run as fast as Physical / Native machines, so why cripple those machines you worked hard for? I won't.

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ECIT-2
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Thats a really great answer as it focuses the perspective(s).

Since the VM world is an 'investment' if I may, then indeed, I should compare its return to other investments.

EC

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admin
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The nature of my question is, is it realistic for a home user with a decent know how and some cash, to live inside a VM for various purposes?

It all comes down to what your "various purposes" are and how well they mesh with virtualization. At home, a good fraction of my activities on my main computer are in virtual machines - I have different ones for coding, VPN, non-demanding games (e.g. Tales of Monkey Island), image editing, insecure browsing, throwaway experimentation, and so on. Each virtual machine is pretty much single-purpose. The stuff I do on the host is pretty much limited to browsing (relatively) trusted sites and IM, both of which could be done in virtual machines, and more demanding games (e.g. Starcraft 2) which would not do well. This is all on a MacBook Pro with 4 GB RAM.

The reason I do this is not consolidation, but primarily sandboxing. I want to keep the host as clean as possible, and to a lesser extent, I want to keep each guest (really, particular application) as clean as possible. Secondarily, I'm not limited to software that runs on the current version of OS X. Finally, it's easy to move setups around or archive them - no worries about catching all the configuration files.

Living in virtual machines isn't for everyone. Some tasks just don't perform well in virtual machines; if those are a majority of what you run, this isn't for you. There's a bunch of overhead to maintaining many virtual machines (lots of disk space, additional RAM to run multiple OSes simultaneously, keeping up on security updates); if you're squeezed for resources, this isn't for you. For me it works pretty well.

ECIT-2
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Well thats true too. I do feel constrained at times with a VM and I fear that constraint might hinder my efforts if I impose them on my family members. Although it promises to be easier to manage, I fear that it offers alternate work instead.

In an ideal world, you might have on VM server for the Office & web browsing stuff for yourself and your family members. You can conrtol their problems wether its technical or social (via kids). I don't imagine the performance on office work is bad, maybe the flash stuff might be an issue while surfing. I mean, if you use your old machines as dumb terminals and when you want to game, well, I guess you can get a second machine for that.

I guess my view on the VM was / is to save electricty (which is argueable), save space in hardware or stretch your old hardware's life, save your downtime in pc crashes. If your guest goes down, you can still multitask on the host.

As for the performace, I agree with you. I normally reboot to windows to do my serious gaming when I have the time for it. (and yeah, if I reboot, then the vm's aren't available in my case). But don't you think as the number of cores go up, the performance hits will deminish. I've read that abilty for programers to program multi thread isn't easy, especially beyond 4 cores. Wouldn't you get a better ROI on your hardware in the future if each VM is taking those cores instead of being in idle?

EC

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ECIT-2
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Do you mind if i ask you what kind of guest OS(s) you use for your MacBook pro ? Are you using a SSD drive for it?

EC

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admin
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Do you mind if i ask you what kind of guest OS(s) you use for your MacBook pro ?

It's a mix. A couple Ubuntu guests for browsing and occasional spreadsheet work, Windows XP and 7 guests for games and experimentation, and OS X guests for VPN/coding/image editing. IIRC, the Ubuntu virtual machines are the lightest at 8 GB disk and 512 MB RAM while the Windows and Mac virtual machines are heavier at around 20 GB disk and 1 GB RAM. I usually have between 0-2 virtual machines open at once.

Are you using a SSD drive for it?

Nope, standard stock rotating drive. I hear SSDs are fantastic, but I don't feel like splurging.

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