[dba-VB] VMs

Arthur,

VMs give you the versatility of creating what ever you need without being
bound to any hardware other than the base system.  That base system can be
just about any OS you want to run.

In my case, I can setup a Win XP machine running Office XP, a Win XP
machine running Office 2003, a Win XP machine running Office 2007,
a Win XP machine running Office 2010,  a Win 7 machine running Office 2003,
a Win 7 machine running Office 2007, a Win 7 machine running Office 2010,
a Win 7 machine running Office 2013, a Win 8 machine running Office 2007,
a Win 8 machine running Office 2010, a Win 8 machine running Office 2013,
a Win 2008 R2 Server running SQL 2008 R2, a Win 2012 Server running SQL
2008 R2, a Win 2008 R2 Server running SQL 2012, a Win 2012 Server running
SQL 2012,  a Win 2008 R2 Server running SharePoint 2010, and...well, 
I think you
can get the point by now.  And, since I have 32 gig of ram in my machine, I can
allocate just enough ram to each VM that I can have 5 or 6 of them 
running at the
same time if I need to.

As to using VHDs, I just use directories on an external hard drive 
for client development.
Each VM can attach to the external drive, or map to it within the 
"network" if needed.  I
then have at least 2 backups of the "development" environment that I 
synchronize using
Allway Sync.

Robert

At 03:01 PM 12/3/2012, you wrote:
>Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 15:08:40 -0500
>From: Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
>To: Salakhetdinov Shamil <mcp2004 at mail.ru>,     "Discussion concerning
>         Visual Basic and related programming issues."
>         <dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com>
>Subject: Re: [dba-VB] [SPAM] Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on
>         Windows 7 and Windows 8
>Message-ID:
>         <CAEPJO1hbF5ZfTvGfm5FmjTx-f7eW92DbgG2-Zpwj_JgYELZENw at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R
>
>Ok, maybe I am getting something absolutely wrong here, but I fail to
>comprehend the VM thing. It seems to me that given the plummeting price of
>hardware, VMs have no reason to exist. For example, all you need for a
>bitchin' Linux box or XP box or Windows 7 box is about $500 or less. Said
>box would run way faster than any VM, and if you have a KVM then you have
>about 4 or 5 boxes all running at once, and push a button to switch from
>this one to that one. Granted, there is also the consumption-of-electricity
>issue to to factor into this, but even granting that, I still don't get it.
>So let us suppose that I want two Linux boxes, onw XP box, one Windows 7
>box, a dedicated server, and although I don't yet have the money, a Windows
>8 box. The XP and Linux boxes think 2GB is wealth. The Win7 and Win8 prefer
>a tad more, and the server more than a tad more. But my point is, why not
>just buy a separate box for each task? We're not talking about huge amounts
>of loot here. And the gain is that everything runs as quickly as it can!
>
>So maybe I'm missing something important here; in which case, please
>educate me.
>
>A.

Robert L. Stewart

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good 
programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler

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