January 17, 2012 at 12:05 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Virtual Lab
January 17, 2012 at 5:04 am
January 17, 2012 at 9:27 am
I am a dev, not an ops guy, but I understand ops love VMs because they can upgrade physical boxes, move VMs from one to another and do lots of other things with minimum fuss.
January 17, 2012 at 9:40 am
I was talking to a junior DBA a few months back who was complaining about not being able to secure a job because he didn't have enough experience. When I asked him if he knew about virtualization, he was lost. I told him how I have learned - and experienced - most of the skills I have using virtualization as my practice lab which started during the days of Connectix. Nobody can claim that virtual labs are not real-life experience because you are getting your hands dirty with real software, using real concepts and potentially troubleshoot real problems that may arise. It's one of the reasons why technical training is complemented with hands-on labs. Even when I was a developer, I used virtual machines to install a beta version of Visual Studio just to play around with it. It definitely is a must for every technology professional wanting to commit to continuous professional development
January 17, 2012 at 9:41 am
How did you explain virtualization to him? I ran into someone, a dev, a couple years ago and it was was a struggle to get him to understand the idea of a VM. For some reason, he was lost, and I had a hard time giving him a good analogy.
January 17, 2012 at 9:51 am
Most developers understand that they have a local workstation where everything is installed. Every once in a while, they need to log in to a development server to check configuration - web.config, IIS, .NET security. A virtual machine is no different from having a server somewhere that you can log in to. However, it could be either on your own workstation or on another machine.
Here's a good read[/url] on how to explain virtualization to non-techies
January 17, 2012 at 10:31 am
Interesting link, but that talks more about the organization and benefits. This guy was having trouble understanding the concept of the entire machine being emulated. If they can't get that concept, it's really hard to put it into words.
I think these days I try to say it's like a VR driving simulator in the passenger seat of your car. It provides all the feedback of a real car, in a real car, but it's also separate in its own environment.
January 17, 2012 at 10:46 am
January 17, 2012 at 10:56 am
One of the best tools in the toolbox is a Virtual Lab.:cool:
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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January 17, 2012 at 11:00 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/17/2012)
How did you explain virtualization to him? I ran into someone, a dev, a couple years ago and it was was a struggle to get him to understand the idea of a VM. For some reason, he was lost, and I had a hard time giving him a good analogy.
My explanation is as follows:
You can run applications under an operating system. That's what people are doing every day.
As operating system is also an application, of a special kind since it has lots of privileges, if you solve relationships between privileges (which is called "protection levels"), you can run operating system and the apps it runs as an app under another operating system.
That is, since the early 70s, called virtual machine.
It is an old hat even for Microsoft: I ran multiple copies of PC-DOS under OS/2 in 1992.
January 17, 2012 at 1:28 pm
I have been doing this for many many years, it has always been one of my favorite uses. But with VMWare Workstation you can create teams with a Virtual network which you can cripple and hobble any way you desire to simulate real world network troubles
January 18, 2012 at 8:02 pm
Best platform for a portable lab is a "laptop" or desktop replacement notebook (BIG laptop) that has 2 hard drive bays. I have an HP DV7 1135NR and I put a 120GB SATA II SSD drive (OCZ) for OS, apps and VMs, and a second 1TB SATA II drive for data storage (not SQL, just videos and pic, etc).
With only 4GB of RAM, I can easily run 6 Server 2008 R2 servers in vmware workstation and the SSD makes the whole environment chug right along, even with 99% RAM and CPU usage. Storage space is a premium on the SSD so only critical apps go on that drive.
No more stacking servers on the plastic folding table in the basement next to the furnace... 🙂
Peter Trast
Microsoft Certified ...(insert many literal strings here)
Microsoft Design Architect with Alexander Open Systems
January 18, 2012 at 9:31 pm
I totally agree with you. With newer laptops capable of running 32GB of RAM, one can easily build a mini-data center. I use my DELL Latitude for multi-subnet, geocluster simulations and delivering failover clustering presentations, something I could not do 10 years back
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