Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with virtualization

New Mac Setup

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:56:33 -0800

OK, so my new Mac will arrive next week. Can power users fill me in on best practices for setting it up? I've used Macs for a looooong time now, but I think I've really lost touch with how they should be set up. I am currently running off of a first-generation MacBook where everything is set up on a single admin user (without a password--ugh).

So, starting from scratch, I'd like to set this up with an admin user, a user for me, and a guest user with limited privileges (but full access to iTunes and innocuous stuff). I've read the great tutorial on from this post already, but I still have (possibly stupid) questions that I'd love your thoughts on.

1) I presume I'll use migration assistant to get everything I want from the MacBook over to the Mac Pro. Do I set up an administrator first and then add the MacBook account as a new user? Or set up administrator and a new user, and import to the new user account directly? I've never used different accounts before--do you install programs while logged in as the administrator and then set which users have access? Or install as the user (with the admin password)? If you install as a user, can the administrator then share with the other accounts?

2) What about security? This thread has a lot of advice I hope to follow. But a couple other questions: I expect my home directory for the user account will be about 300-500 GB. Is Filevault able to decrypt/encrypt large directories on the fly, or does it get choked up? Does it make more sense just to use encryption on certain subfolders, rather than the whole user directory? If so, what program? Should I be setting up an Open Firmware password? Or is this just overkill?

3) Would it make sense to keep all of my documents on a second drive in one of the extra bays, so that I can yank the personal stuff if I ever have to send in the machine?

4) What about installing Windows? I think I'm assuming I might install it with Bootcamp, but I have an old version of Parallels I might upgrade to the latest and greatest. Is it safer to install Windows on a dedicated drive? How does Windows (either in Boot Camp or in virtualization) play with multiple accounts/security settings?

I'd definitely like to set up the new machine right the first time. Thanks in advance for your input!

How does Google do its thing?

geoff. — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:11:20 -0800

How does Google run their data centers? I remember watching a Q&A with someone at Google trying to recruit kids at a college. One of them asked what kind of hardware they run on, he responded that they buy commodity rack servers off rackservers.com (I forget the exact generic domain he gave). Does this mean they use cheap rack servers with direct-attached storage? How does this work? I cannot find the video, but I remember it being surprisingly frank. They were recruiting kids for what seemed to the sysadmin jobs of the company. They were divulging a fair amount about Google's operations and one thing that I remember was the emphasis on buying commodity servers on the cheap.

How does this work? Do they engineer their software to work in this fashion? Or, what I'm really asking, is how do I do this on a scale of two to three racks? Is it feasible?

hincandenza touched on this in his wonderful answer:

At the lower layer, there are for each cluster likely hundreds if not thousands of machines. Google uses very inexpensive PCs, usually buying cheap discarded or sub-par hardware directly from vendors like Intel and throwing together hordes of machines. If a machine doesn't work- throw it out, it's cheaper to replace than to spend people-hours on it. These machines are likely not even as powerful as your own desktop or laptop, but that doesn't matter- thousands of them working together makes up for their individual weakness and unreliability.

It seems, from what I gather, that they are teaming up with a virtualization partner to deliver this kind of flexibility. Are there commercial, off the shelf programs that do this? Does ESX and Virtual Center do this? I have worked with ESX but didn't think it was as flexible as this. Surely someone else has tried to do this? It would be so much cheaper to buy cheap, cheap machines and add capacity as needed, than buying expensive sans. I just haven't found anything that would allow me to take, say, an Exhcange installation, and throw it into a cloud. So what's the deal? Is this all custom Google stuff?

Insights to convert a physical computer to a virtual machine

fcoury — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:53:29 -0800

What are the alternatives on converting a physical computer to a virtual machine that would run (preferably) on a Virtual Box emulator? I have an old computer around with Windows XP that I use only from Remote Desktop. I was wondering if I could transform that into a VM image and shut it down once and for all.

The only drawback is that it runs a modified version of Windows so I would not be able to just install a new WinXP VM and backup / restore. It would have to be a more physical-style copy.

Any insights?

How well does ThinApp work?

geoff. — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:53:57 -0800

Does anyone have experience in using ThinApp in a corporate environment? Does it end up being trouble or does it just work? I've had really good luck with virtualization at every level, and played around with ThinApp was in its beta, other things came up and I kind of abandoned it. It seems great, are there wikis or other recipes somewhere on the web for packaging different programs? What about performance? How is that in reality?

Forgive me, Steve Jobs!

photomusic86 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:44 -0800

What do I need to do to prep my MacBook Pro for running Vista as a virtual machine? I need Windows to run two or three specialized programs. I am also a die-hard Apple lover. Thus, I don't know what needs to be done to a Vista system to keep it from catching every virus ever made. I'm running last year's MacBook Pro model OS X 10.5 with free virtualization software VirtualBox. And please explain everything as if you were teaching someone who knows nothing about Windows (of any type), and only just barely knows anything about VirtualBox, or any virtualization software. Links are appreciated.

Best Test Setup for Windows 7

xxnopiratesxx — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:38:19 -0800

What is the best/safest Windows 7 Test Setup? Virtualization? Partition an HD? I'm currently downloading Windows 7 and I'm trying to think of the best way to test it out without ruining my current setup.

My main concern with partitioning part of my laptop's hard drive is that the boot loader will overwrite vista's and I'll get locked out of my maching.

The other option is virtualization, but Vista is a huge pain to virtualize and I assume that W7 will be the same way.

Any thoughts on the bootloader issue? What has the hive been using to test W7?

How to add a physical hard disk in VMWare Fusion?

charlesroper — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:44:42 -0800

How can I make VMWare Fusion recognize my additional (physical) hard disks? I have an Intel-based Mac Pro running OS X Tiger (10.4.11) and Windows XP SP2 (under boot camp).

I'm tired of rebooting multiple times a day to access the various programs I need to, so I decided to try VMWare Fusion, but I'm having some trouble configuring it.

I was able to run my Boot Camp installation via vmware, and it seems to be working fine (other than trying to reactive all of the software!).

My main problem now is getting all of my additional hard drives to appear in VMware. That is to say, I have several additional 500 GB storage drives that I want to be able to access when I'm working through VMware. As far as I can tell, I can create new "virtual disks", but that is not what I want to do.

If this makes sense at all - please offer your advice. Likewise, if this is confusing, please let me know and I'll try to clarify further.

I also have a copy of Leopard, but I'm hesitant to install it because I'm afraid of messing up my current Tiger and Boot Camp (XP) installations. Anyone have experience successfully upgrading to Leopard with a setup similar to mine?

Need suggestions for a Xen-compatible rackmount server.

fishfucker — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:16:18 -0800

We need to buy two rackmount servers that will play nice with Xen (and Linux). Budget: approx $10k. Can you suggest a configuration, brand, and/or vendor? I've been asked to price out a pair of servers for my company but I'm way out of the loop with contemporary hardware trends, especially server-class hardware. I'm not particularly interested in spending man hours to save a few bucks, and we definitely DO NOT WANT to hand-build or buy a whitebox -- we need a vendor who offers knowledgeable tech support on their hardware. FWIW, we don't have a dedicated sysadmin right now (which is why I'm asking here), but probably will within the next 3-6 months.

Parameters:

1. Should be designed to have Linux installed (preferred flavors are CentOS and Debian). Should support Xen. Unless there's a good argument that it's pointless, should have Intel processors that support VT.

2. Obvious: Hardware RAID. Must be rack-mountable. Space/power not a huge concern for now, but prefer under 2U.

3. We'll be buying two; one will be used to provide web/mail/etc services and will probably run a Xen hypervisor with all services being installed on Xen slices. The second one will be a dedicated file/database (likely MySQL) server. We're expecting to spend a little more on the database server (which will have additional disk space).

4. Pretty sure we want to go with a major manufacturer (Dell, HP,
etc) because I assume this will make management simpler as we add more machines and mean replacement parts have generally better availability than a white-box or home-built. Ideally next time we buy a server (which would probably be before the end of the year), we'd just order another couple of whatever we went with this time.

5. We are looking at either Zimbra or Scalix. We'd probably want to start with it on a Xen slice then migrate it to a full machine as our number of seats grows -- right now we're around 6 seats but may be scaling up to 50 before the year is up. I'm also interested in other possible mail options that 1) have Outlook support, 2) allow calendar sharing and 3) have mobile support. We'd prefer to run OSS, but are not entirely opposed to closed source if it'll meet our needs better.

Running Windows on my space-constrained Macbook

dondiego87 — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:18:35 -0800

I need some help with running Windows on my Mac. Okay, I know that this topic has been covered extensively on Ask MeFi before. I have reviewed what I've found here (as well as at various websites specializing in this sort of thing) and couldn't really get all of my questions answered, so I'm posing them myself.

THE SITUATION: I currently have a somewhat old Windows XP SP2 desktop machine sitting in my room, as well as a year-old Macbook (2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB of RAM). I use the Windows machine essentially for just one program for my job. Next January, I will be moving into a dorm, and will likely not have room for the desktop machine; thus I am interested in getting Windows on my Macbook.

THE PROBLEMS: Windows XP came pre-installed on the desktop, so I have no install CDs. I also have no recovery CD(s), although I assume I could make one (a set?) if the need arises. Also, I only have around 10GB of space left on my Macbook, which presents problems for virtualization software (virtual machines tend to be big, I hear). Finally, Boot Camp is not an option, as I am not going to be upgrading to Leopard any time soon.

THE QUESTIONS:

Would there be any way to simply remove the hard drive from my Windows machine, put it in an enclosure, plug it into my Mac, and make virtualization work that way?

If I did this external-HD plan, would a virtualization program still have to create a virtual machine on my Macbook's hard drive, or would it do that on the external drive? The latter would be much preferred, due to my Macbook's space limitations.

Would running a virtual machine over USB 2.0 or Firewire 400 mean any performance decreases from what I would experience running it from an internal drive? (Not too much of a problem, as the program I'll be running under Windows is pretty light.)

As usual, thanks so much for your help.

Windows on Linux - without Windows

cdmwebs — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:55:28 -0800

Is it possible to create a virtual Windows machine on a Debian box without X, then access the virtual machine remotely? Basically, I want to have a headless Debian server running virtual machines. I'm sure it's possible, and I've done similar things inside of X, but how would I go about doing it without X? Qemu? VMWare? Virtualbox?

Teach me about Linux VM choices.

fogster — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:28:11 -0800

VMFilter: Talk to me about virtual machines on Ubuntu. I am running Feisty. My processor supports hardware virtualization. I'd like to run WinXP and/or Vista from within Linux, and possibly experiment with other Linux setups.

I'm overwhelmed by choices. I used vmware many moons ago, but it now seems silly to emulate an x86 processor when I'm on an x86 processor, especially when I don't have to. Xen is one of the things I've heard of supporting hardware virtualization, but it seems like a decent amount of work to get it running. But it seems like I'm overlooking a lot of others. There's virtualbox, but I don't quite get that. And I keep seeing references to kvm. Is that out? Stable?

I don't want to dual-boot. I want to run Windows within a VM inside of Linux.

I'd strongly prefer a free solution. What are my options? What would you choose? What do you use now? (Bonus points if the solution lets me run an application on my desktop, Coherence (I think?) style, as opposed to forcing me to use a whole desktop inside a window... But this isn't a dealbreaker.)

Virtualization Recommendations

afx114 — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:51:01 -0800

LAMPFilter: Which VPS solution (Virtuozzo, VMware, freeVPS, etc) is recommended for a small web-hosting company? I run a small web-hosting company who in the past has always used dedicated servers for larger clients. But with today's modern servers sitting mostly idle, even for traffic heavy sites, we're looking into a virtualization solution to combine multiple dedicated servers into one VPS'd powerhouse machine.

I've done plenty of research online about the various options, but I am looking for anecdotal evidence and experience of real life users out there. How realistic and how easy is it to get a VPS setup going? Any happy or horror stories are appreciated.

(Note: We run strictly LAMP-style servers)

Any suggestions for a good homebrew rig to run a VM on?

TrueVox — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 17:10:33 -0800

I'm looking to build a Virtual Machine friendly PC box. I'm hoping to spend no more then $600 on it to start (that will not include a moniter; I don't need one), but the key is to have it be quite expandable in the future (say 1 to 1.5 years). I don't need a lot of starting RAM, just enough to run one or two low demand VMs (one with XP on it). Any good suggestions for what I should look to buy (full specs please)? I assume I should be looking into the newer chips, right? Thank you!

Virtualization websites?

EnormousTalkingOnion — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:19:37 -0800

What are the best community (news, blogs, message boards, etc.) sites related to virtualization and virtual machines?

VirtualPC Security

kirkaracha — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 13:15:11 -0800

Is VirtualPC less secure than an actual PC? [more inside] I proposed getting VirtualPC for my Mac at work so I can test web sites on multiple Windows browsers. (I have a PC with IE 5.5 on it.) Our IT department doesn't want to install VirtualPC because it "presents a vulnerability to hackers." It seems to me that VirtualPC would be more secure than an actual PC because I would only run it sporadically, and if someone did hack into it, they would only be able to access the VirtualPC "partition" on my Mac, not the whole computer. As far as securing access to the rest of the network, why would that be any different than securing a PC?

I know about installing multiple versions of IE, but they're skittish about that, too.