What is virtualization?
Bart Silverstrim
bsilver at chrononomicon.com
Tue Oct 23 01:28:00 UTC 2007
Default User wrote:
> Wow, thanks to all who replied!
>
> I had (tried to) read the aforementioned
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization article. Let's just say it
> was "information rich". That's why I asked if anyone had a simple
> synopsis.
>
> I can tell that a number of people seem to really like virtualization.
> For them, I'm glad that it exists and that they find it (mostly) useful.
> For me though, I guess I'm just old fashioned. I think I'll skip the extra
> overhead and complexity. If I want to run multiple OSes, I'll just enter
> them in GRUB and reboot as needed.
That's fine, depends on your usage scenario. Virtualization is
excellent for testing, since you can back up the "hard drive" as a big
file and take snapshots of system state easily. The data on your system
isn't harmed, because the virtualization is kind of a sandbox.
I use it because of the ease of creating and moving systems as virtual
servers and testboxes. It's simple to create a testbed or server, and
make a backup, then if something happens, run it on another system
without reconfiguring it but still getting services back up.
It's also great because I can make a snapshot of a system, install some
test or short-term software, and "roll back" to a known good condition
without a lot of fuss, muss, or reconfiguration.
I also don't lose a partition or lose my running system while trying to
do something on a "windows-only" application that I need for only an hour.
It doesn't take much to give it a shot. Just install virtualbox or
vmware-server (if you don't need sound) and give it a try. Don't like
it, uninstall the software and delete the virtual machine. Much better
than reversing the effects of a dual-boot situation :-)
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