Virtual Machines the Way to Go?
I personally have been a big fan of virtual machines (VM). I remember writing my first virus (in college) on a QEmu-hosted MS-DOS installation (My desktop was running only Linux and didn’t have the guts to start writing a Linux virus). The virus was called MrClean and it would scan and remove a number of pre-selected viruses on files. However, it would infect all files in the filesystem with itself. After a certain date, it would then remove itself. I made the mistake of running MrClean with the “browse entire filesystem” option enabled. Oh boy, did I mess up my MS-DOS installation. Fortunately, it was just on a VM. So, I trashed that VM and installed a new one. No harm done.
In those days, VMs were only practical for low CPU and memory requirement systems such as MS-DOS and maybe even MS Windows 98 (on a really beefy system). However, today things have changed. Right now, we have GHz clocked processors as entry level and 512 MB memory default. Heck, I keep five (5) different VMs on my Dell Latitude D510 and run at most two (2) at any give time. Running my Fedora Core 5 alone seems to be a big waste of CPU and Memory. Typically, my Fedora Core 5 speedstep pegs my CPU clock at 800MHz.
Enter VMWare Server. VMWare has been in the VM market for quite sometime. Now, they have released their VMWare Server product free (as in beer) for Linux and MS Windows. VMWare has provided their VMWare Player product for free (as in beer) for quite some time. However, this player did not have the ability to create virtual machines. The VMWare Server product has been in Public Beta only until recently. Right now, the VMWare Server is now at Release Candidate 1 (during my last check it was labeled Version 1 dated 06/01/06 ). Even as Beta and RC grade software, VMWare Server is truly a marvel to use. It didn’t take me long to figure out. In my case, it was just an RPM and a Perl Script from usability. The first thing I did was install a CentOS 4.3 VM for my software server-side development stuff. Then when I installed RC1, I installed Ubuntu 6.06 just to try it out. Now, I have a VM for my test VoIP SoftPBX server, security scanning suite, Solaris 10 and a lot of smaller VMs (I download from the VMWare website).
Anyway, I am getting carried away. I have yet to try Xen (because I don’t want to recompile my kernel) and I pretty impressed at the state of freely available virtualization software. So, in this age of generous amounts of CPU, memory and disk space, VMs are becoming more and more ideal for data center deployments. Here are just some of the exciting VM uses.
- Hardware resources can be allocated on a per VM level. Imagine being able to deploy multiple systems in a single box. This will allows enterprises to maximize their existing hardware investments. Idle virtual machines can be disabled or suspended to save on resources.
- You can start, stop, re-instantiate and manipulate each as if they were separate machines. This is particularly interesting for software development scenarios where we give VMs to particular developer groups. We can even allow particular developers to “take” entire VMs home to work with. This way we can ensure uniform development environments.
- Server consolidation scenarios will allow for multiple “guest operating systems” to be running on a single hardware platform with each guest assigned a particular task. This is particularly important for non-compatible systems like MS Exchange on MS Windows and Postfix/Dovecot on Linux.
- This also helps with back and restore scenarios where the stable state on an entire VM can be backed up and stored in a safe location. In the event of failure, it is just a matter of re-installing the host system, installing VMWare Server and loading the backed-up VM on it.
These are just some of the potential uses of VM technology. There are more interesting uses such as clustered, load-balancing and fault tolerant VM hosts. Capacity can simply be increased by adding new VM hosts. In the event of failure, multiple VM hosts allow for sufficient redundancy. I can’t even begin to list the other “enterprise” uses of VM technology. Of course, most of this is beyond the capability of the free (as in beer) VM technologies out there. This is where VMWare plans to make its dough. VMWare is making alliances with a number of hardware vendors include Dell and EMC on potential enterprise VM solutions. Things are getting pretty existing in this space. Let us see where technology will take us.
I would like to also thank my friend, Dominque Cimafranca, for introducing VMWare ESX when he was still at IBM. Who has a PC Magazine Philippines article on VMWare. And also to Migs Paraz for introducting me to the free VMWare Server and convincing me that it was really free (as in beer).
June 14th, 2006 at 3:25 am
Is it hard to believe that VMWare Server is free beer? It is but a marketing device to get people to buy ESX + expensive EMC storage!
June 14th, 2006 at 8:06 am
Of course, EMC is also working on its infrastructure wide solutions which potentially make more for less. Smaller number of high value customers.
June 16th, 2006 at 7:13 am
I don’t know much about VM. Now that you have written this post, I think it makes things clearer to me about its uses, etc.
June 16th, 2006 at 7:47 am
nice to hear you liked the article. i suggest you start downloading VMWare Server and give it a spin. nowadays, i am now able to maximize my laptop’s power. of course, i am also beginning the feel its slowness.
June 21st, 2006 at 4:40 am
I don’t think I’ve encountered the specs of your laptop: mind sharing it? I’ve refrained from running VMWare Server on the company-issued laptop of mine because of the perception of it to be uber slow, and have been running all my VM stuff on my desktop.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I have been using Virtual technologies for the past 2 years. Currently I am running over 100 VM’s on nine 4 cpu servers a mix of production and test/development. Sure sometimes you see the performance hit. But 90% of the time the VM runs fine. I can talk for hours about the benefits but just look at it simply 90 less servers at 5K each. How much electricity does it take to power 90 servers for a year? How about cooling them and supporting them? I can claim to have saved well over a 500K. Without having to go into any of the other benefits of VM’s. Like portability ease of deployment backup DR bla bla bla………
July 19th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Interesting environment 9 CPU with 100 VMs. What are these 100 VMs running? LAMP stacks? How much memory?
July 21st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
what I think is a great want for VM technology is the possibility of playing games inside a VM.
Forget the servers, parents will pay bucks to anyone who protects their PCs from their kids. The scenario would be a home pc with vmware running on a restricted account. The kids have administrator privileges in the VM so they are free to pollute it with their games while dad’s work is safe, maybe in another VM.
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:55 am
hi emulator,
you have a new idea here. i never really thought of it in these terms. safe VM to running games, limewire, kazaa and other things that can potentially bring malware inside the system. at least, if something is contaminated it is just a VM. interesting….
with the power of current laptops and home desktops plus free virtualization technology like VMWare, this is now definitely possible.
nice going!