OK, so I realise I'm probably about 20 years behind everybody else, but 
seriously... this is THE coolest thing I've seen this year! I would 
never have believed it was physically possible - and certainly not 
without spending hours setting it up. I can't get over how EASY this was!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"im in ur windoze, runnin ur linux."

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK, so I realise I'm probably about 20 years behind everybody else, but 
> seriously... this is THE coolest thing I've seen this year! I would 
> never have believed it was physically possible - and certainly not 
> without spending hours setting it up. I can't get over how EASY this was!

	You're not that far behind. I only recently set up VirtualBox on my 
Linux so that I could run Windows. Works like a charm - I was really 
surprised.

-- 
It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48baa0c0@news.povray.org...
> OK, so I realise I'm probably about 20 years behind everybody else, but
> seriously... this is THE coolest thing I've seen this year!

Virtual machines are soooo useful. I've been using them for some time to 
test out beta software that I don't want breaking my machine, or to try out 
things that I know are going to break stuff (hence the name of the VPC in 
the picture)

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Gail wrote:

> Virtual machines are soooo useful. I've been using them for some time to 
> test out beta software that I don't want breaking my machine, or to try 
> out things that I know are going to break stuff (hence the name of the 
> VPC in the picture)

My PC at work is barely powerful enough to run *one* OS, let alone two. 
It _would_ be quite useful for test purposes though. (Aside from the 
small matter that most of the things I want a test machine for relate to 
specific hardware issues, which obviously a virtual machine doesn't help 
with...)

However, the idea of being able to just plug in a USB stick and click an 
icon and instantly have a complete Linux environment set up exactly the 
way I want it is... pretty neat, actually. It's like I can just put my 
life on a USB stick, keep it in my pocket, and never again find myself 
sat at a PC that lacks a development environment. Haskell EVERYWHERE! >:-D

Only trouble is... it would have to be a pretty damned big USB stick. 
DSL is nice, but rather minimal. (Shocker.) KNOPPIX is 700 MB 
compressed, and decompresses to something like 4 GB...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:16:57 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild (dot) co
[dot] za> wrote:

A new email address, Gail! 
Have you started your new job yet?
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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"Stephen" <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote in message 
news:pmhlb49pho3518hld68ob2f0h600na7nk4@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:16:57 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild 
> (dot) co
> [dot] za> wrote:
>
> A new email address, Gail!
> Have you started your new job yet?

That's actually the email address related to my blog 
(http://sqlinthewild.co.za) not a work address.
I have started the job. Going slowly at the moment. Should be picking up in 
a week or two. Lots of clients are currently 'considering what they want'

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

> Virtual machines are soooo useful.

Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bac671$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> Virtual machines are soooo useful. I've been using them for some time to 
>> test out beta software that I don't want breaking my machine, or to try 
>> out things that I know are going to break stuff (hence the name of the 
>> VPC in the picture)
>
> My PC at work is barely powerful enough to run *one* OS, let alone two. It 
> _would_ be quite useful for test purposes though.

That's one of the main reasons I went for a quad core with lots of memory 
when I upgraded. So that I could have a couple of virtuals running and still 
have the base machine usable.
For example, this afternoon, I was doing performance testing on SQL 2008 on 
the base machine while I had a virtual running that was doing a 2005-2008 
upgrade

> However, the idea of being able to just plug in a USB stick and click an 
> icon and instantly have a complete Linux environment set up exactly the 
> way I want it is... pretty neat, actually.

You might have problems with IO speed if you do that. USB is a lot slower 
than SATA.

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bacc83$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> Virtual machines are soooo useful.
>
> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/

They can be. Depends how much resources you give them though.

Post a reply to this message

>> My PC at work is barely powerful enough to run *one* OS, let alone 
>> two. It _would_ be quite useful for test purposes though.
> 
> That's one of the main reasons I went for a quad core with lots of 
> memory when I upgraded.

I can see how that would be the case. ;-)

>> However, the idea of being able to just plug in a USB stick and click 
>> an icon and instantly have a complete Linux environment set up exactly 
>> the way I want it is... pretty neat, actually.
> 
> You might have problems with IO speed if you do that. USB is a lot 
> slower than SATA.

Depends what you want to do. Running Damn Small Linux from a USB drive 
is probably *faster* than running it from a CD-ROM due to the vastly 
superior seek time. (CD-ROM drives typically have a horrible seek time!) 
Also, DSL is based on KNOPPIX and uses a cloop compressed filesystem 
image, so there's less data to shift (but more CPU load).

If I get bored enough maybe I'll benchmark it. But either way, it's a 
trivial matter to copy a folder off the USB drive and onto a spare 
folder on the local HD, run it for a while, and then just delete it when 
you're done. That's about the easiest install/uninstall procedure 
imaginable! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Gail wrote:
>  
> Virtual machines are soooo useful. I've been using them for some time to 
> test out beta software that I don't want breaking my machine, or to try 
> out things that I know are going to break stuff (hence the name of the 
> VPC in the picture)
> 

I use them at work, while one real server can easily hold up the work of 
3 smaller servers, and having only one hardware makes less heat, uses 
less power, costs less money and takes up less space.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:54:53 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild (dot) co
[dot] za> wrote:

>
>"Stephen" <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote in message 
>news:pmhlb49pho3518hld68ob2f0h600na7nk4@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:16:57 +0200, "Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild 
>> (dot) co
>> [dot] za> wrote:
>>
>> A new email address, Gail!
>> Have you started your new job yet?
>
>That's actually the email address related to my blog 
>(http://sqlinthewild.co.za) not a work address.

You have a blog dedicated to SQL? Is that so you don't use this forum for Haskel
Oops! Sorry Andrew :)

>I have started the job. Going slowly at the moment. Should be picking up in 
>a week or two. Lots of clients are currently 'considering what they want'

Yes, I understand. My new job (with Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water)) started off slow
then accelerated so that I've little time for Pov-ing. 
I hope yours goes well.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK, so I realise I'm probably about 20 years behind everybody else, but 
> seriously... this is THE coolest thing I've seen this year! 

I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but 
I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which 
virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but 
> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which 
> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

1. Go to http://www1.interq.or.jp/t-takeda/top.html

2. Download the zip file at the top of that page.

3. Unzip it somewhere.

4. Find an ISO image for a Linux LiveCD.

5. Do the following:

   qemu.exe -cdrom My_LiveCD.iso

6. Watch it boot up.

It's that easy.

(Actually no, it isn't. The path to the ISO image must contain only 
FORWARD SLASHES, not backslashes. Also, if the current directory isn't 
the QEMU folder, you must add the -L switch with the correct path so the 
emulator can find things like the BIOS image, keymaps, etc.)

The *home page* for QEMU is here:

   http://bellard.org/qemu/

But you have to hunt around a bit for the Windoze port. So I have you 
the direct URL...



If all of that is too much effort, go to

   http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

and download the "embedded" Zip file. This contains a .bat file that you 
can just double-click to start up Linux.



PS. If you want to "install" Linux rather than run off a read-only 
LiveCD, you can create a harddisk image using the qemu-img.exe tool. 
Something like this:

   C:\> qemu-img create Disk1.img 500MB
   C:\> qemu -cdrom My_Install_Disk.iso -hda Disk1.img

Now install Linux onto /dev/hda. Once you've done that, you can run

   C:\> qemu -hda Disk1.img

and you have a read/write Linux system. (Obviously similar steps work 
for *any* OS. Build an empty harddisk image, run the emulator with the 
install CD ISO image and the harddisk, install, you're done.)


My God... I sound like I know what I'm talking about! This morning when 
I woke up, I knew none of this. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> My God... I sound like I know what I'm talking about! This morning when 
> I woke up, I knew none of this. ;-)

Very nifty. Thanks very much!  I was going to try out the VM from 
Microsoft, but this sounds a lot easier to get working. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:

> Very nifty. Thanks very much!  I was going to try out the VM from 
> Microsoft, but this sounds a lot easier to get working. :-)

Yeah. Zero install. Unzip a file and you're ready to execute stuff.

As I say, DSL uses it to run off a USB flash drive. Stick the flash 
drive in, double-click, you have Linux running. Don't even have to 
reboot. Live CDs EAT YOUR HEART OUT! (OTOH, emulation is obviously just 
a tad slower...!)

Actually, I *think* you can even tell it to use your real CD-ROM drive 
as the emulated CD-ROM, if you don't have an ISO image but have a real 
CD... You can also do the same with your HD, but... uh... don't!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> CD... You can also do the same with your HD, but... uh... don't!

I'll have to see if I can make it run the Linux on the other partition, 
just to see. It could be pretty cool if I could get into my work 
machine's configuration for a bit without having to stop what I'm doing 
in Windows every time they want some free advice. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Gail wrote:
> 
>> Virtual machines are soooo useful.
> 
> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
> 

They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your real
CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but
> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which
> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)

Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
Windows host...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I'll have to see if I can make it run the Linux on the other partition,
> just to see. It could be pretty cool if I could get into my work
> machine's configuration for a bit without having to stop what I'm doing
> in Windows every time they want some free advice. :-)

That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than your
real machine. It's like taking the HD off and booting it on a machine with
completely different CPU, motherboard, network card, graphics card...

At least Windows would pop up a dozen "new hardware detected" messages :)

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than your
> real machine. 

Oh. I wasn't aware it was an emulator rather than a VM.

I'll give it a go and watch it crash and burn anyway. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I've been thinking of playing with some virtual machine technology, but
>> I wasn't aware there was one under Windows that would run Linux. Which
>> virtual machine are you running here? (I.e., what's the Windows software?)
> 
> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
> Windows host...

"I've been thinking of playing with some VM technology" kind of implies 
  I haven't already, you see. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than
>> your real machine.
> 
> Oh. I wasn't aware it was an emulator rather than a VM.

VMware, VirtualBox, and VirtualPC are VMs. QEMU is a CPU emulator.

Being a VM means they virtualize rather than emulate the CPU, but usually
not much more. The graphics processor, sound card, network card, etc. are
still emulated (access efficiently forwarded to the real hardware, but the
guest OS still doesn't see the real hardware).

Heck, VMware Workstation even lets you simulate packet loss in the virtual
network cards :)

Same for HD and memory. A tool like CPU-Z wouldn't be able to see the real
manufacturer of the RAM sticks. The RAM in the guest OS is actually a
memory-mapped file in the host OS hard disk. The guest OS hard disk is
usually just a big file too; no way the guest OS can see real SMART data
from the physical disk.

Post a reply to this message

>> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
> 
> They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
> machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your real
> CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.

Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> VMware, VirtualBox, and VirtualPC are VMs. QEMU is a CPU emulator.

QEMU apparently allows you to emulate different CPUs for that matter... 
It appears to have emulation for Motorola 68000 for example.

> Being a VM means they virtualize rather than emulate the CPU, but usually
> not much more. The graphics processor, sound card, network card, etc. are
> still emulated.

To be honest, I'm surprised that QEMU can exist. I would have expected 
the emulated CPU to be maybe 1,000,000x slower than the real one, which 
would of course be unusably slow. But somehow they've made it not be 
that slow - and given it away for free too.

(I am still constantly amazed at the amount of high-quality software you 
can pick up for free these days. Emulating an entire IBM PC must surely 
be many man-centuries of development work...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on a
> Windows host...

I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that 
any free ones existed for Windoze.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Stephen" <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote in message 
news:ucjlb4l1ddf87j4lves2ms6p2hgf8i7cra@4ax.com...

>
> You have a blog dedicated to SQL?

Yup. For over a year now. It's surprising how the hits have grown, 
especially over the last 3 months

> Is that so you don't use this forum for Haskel
> Oops! Sorry Andrew :)
>

Somehow I don't think too many people here would be interested in a deep 
discussion on the internals of the query optimiser. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba1c1$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Also - virtual machines are SOOOO SLOOOOOW... :-/
>>
>> They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a virtual
>> machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use your 
>> real
>> CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.
>
> Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?

Not at all. VirtualPC is what I'm using on my destop. I run  it on my laptop 
as well. VMWare (workstation) will run on any modern PC with a compatible 
processor (virtually all of the intel and AMD chips)
That's the whole point of virtual machines, they don't need specialised 
hardware

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba2b7$1@news.povray.org...
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
>> Huh? I have yet to see virtual machine software that *can't* run Linux on 
>> a
>> Windows host...
>
> I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that any 
> free ones existed for Windoze.
>

VirtualPC and VirtualServer are both free. I don't know offhand if they will 
run *nix. I've seen some web sites that say it's possible, never tried 
myself.
VMWare's ESXi is free now, though that's a server-level product, not 
necessarily something for a desktop. Should be able to run on a desktop. 
Definitly supports Linus at lease asa  guest OS

Post a reply to this message

>>> They aren't that slow. Thing is, you're using QEMU, which isn't a 
>>> virtual
>>> machine, it's an emulator. Software like VMware or VirtualBox use 
>>> your real
>>> CPU instead of basically executing x86 code on an interpreter.
>>
>> Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?
> 
> Not at all. VirtualPC is what I'm using on my destop. I run  it on my 
> laptop as well. VMWare (workstation) will run on any modern PC with a 
> compatible processor (virtually all of the intel and AMD chips)
> That's the whole point of virtual machines, they don't need specialised 
> hardware

But surely if you're going to run a guest OS on the physical host CPU, 
the host CPU would need to have hardware support for enforcing the host 
seperation?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that 
>> any free ones existed for Windoze.
>>
> 
> VirtualPC and VirtualServer are both free. I don't know offhand if they 
> will run *nix. I've seen some web sites that say it's possible, never 
> tried myself.
> VMWare's ESXi is free now, though that's a server-level product, not 
> necessarily something for a desktop. Should be able to run on a desktop. 
> Definitly supports Linus at lease asa  guest OS

I didn't say there weren't any, I said I hadn't heard of any. ;-)

Until yesterday, the only products I'd heard of where Bochs (only runs 
on Linux) and VMware (AFAIK that's extremely expensive). Oh, and doesn't 
Micro$oft now have some product that's just called "virtual server" or 
something undistinctive? Presumably that's a server product that is only 
available enterprise customers who've signed an NDA...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba91c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> But surely if you're going to run a guest OS on the physical host CPU, the 
> host CPU would need to have hardware support for enforcing the host 
> seperation?
>

I don't know how they work, but they can and do run on any standard modern 
PC.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bba9d8$1@news.povray.org...

> Until yesterday, the only products I'd heard of where Bochs (only runs on 
> Linux) and VMware (AFAIK that's extremely expensive).

Mostly, but one of their server products is free now.

> Oh, and doesn't Micro$oft now have some product that's just called 
> "virtual server" or something undistinctive? Presumably that's a server 
> product that is only available enterprise customers who've signed an 
> NDA...

Yes they do, and if you'd read a few lines up you'd  have seen that. It's 
free. As in, go and download, no purchases or NDAs necessary.
I don't personally run virtual server, I get by just fine with it's little 
brother (Virtual PC), but it's not a server-only app. It does run on XP, 
though it's designed more for server-usage.
Then, of course, there's Hyper-V built into Server 2008.

Post a reply to this message

> Only trouble is... it would have to be a pretty damned big USB stick. DSL 
> is nice, but rather minimal. (Shocker.) KNOPPIX is 700 MB compressed, and 
> decompresses to something like 4 GB...

ebuyer have a 8GB USB stick for 14.09 inc VAT.  You could buy a couple of 
them, one for the OS/programs, and another one for data files etc.

Post a reply to this message

>> Only trouble is... it would have to be a pretty damned big USB stick. DSL 
>> is nice, but rather minimal. (Shocker.) KNOPPIX is 700 MB compressed, and 
>> decompresses to something like 4 GB...
>
> ebuyer have a 8GB USB stick for 14.09 inc VAT.  You could buy a couple of 
> them, one for the OS/programs, and another one for data files etc.

Or get this beast:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140327

(I didn't even realise you could get 32GB USB sticks now!)

Post a reply to this message

>> Until yesterday, the only products I'd heard of where Bochs (only runs 
>> on Linux) and VMware (AFAIK that's extremely expensive).
> 
> Mostly, but one of their server products is free now.

I see...

>> Oh, and doesn't Micro$oft now have some product that's just called 
>> "virtual server" or something undistinctive? Presumably that's a 
>> server product that is only available enterprise customers who've 
>> signed an NDA...
> 
> Yes they do, and if you'd read a few lines up you'd  have seen that. 

As I say, I couldn't remember it's exact name, so I wasn't sure if the 
virtual server you were referring to was the M$ product or somebody else's.

> It's free. As in, go and download, no purchases or NDAs necessary.

That's an... interesting move. Still, I guess if you have 100 virtual 
servers and they all run Windows, you still need 100 server licenses.

> I don't personally run virtual server, I get by just fine with it's 
> little brother (Virtual PC), but it's not a server-only app. It does run 
> on XP, though it's designed more for server-usage.
> Then, of course, there's Hyper-V built into Server 2008.

Until yesterday, I had always assumed that any kind of emulation or 
virtualisation solution would be roughly 1,000,000x slower than native 
execution, so it's not something I've ever been interested in. Hence 
it's something I know almost nothing about. However, since it appears 
that you can actually run real software at almost native speeds, 
suddenly it becomes far more interesting... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

>> ebuyer have a 8GB USB stick for 14.09 inc VAT.  You could buy a couple 
>> of them, one for the OS/programs, and another one for data files etc.
> 
> Or get this beast:
> 
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140327
> 
> (I didn't even realise you could get 32GB USB sticks now!)

I was looking at all this myself just last night. ;-)

There seems to be a rather big jump from 8GB to 32GB with nothing in the 
middle. Hmm. (And yeah, *I* didn't know they'd got that big now either. 
Last time I looked, 4GB was about the best that money could buy.)

But anyway, the 8GB stick certainly seems like a very reasonably 
proposition, and I am seriously considering such a thing. ;-)

As an aside, my current USB stick (which I always take everywhere with 
me) is an LG 1GB from ebuyer. It cost something absurd like £1.20. IIRC 
the postage was vastly more than the actual drive! Best of all: it's 
shiny. (You can actually see your reflection in it.) The cap is actually 
slightly wonky, but for £1.20 who's complaining?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> However, the idea of being able to just plug in a USB stick and click an 
> icon and instantly have a complete Linux environment set up exactly the 
> way I want it is... pretty neat, actually. It's like I can just put my 
> life on a USB stick, keep it in my pocket, and never again find myself 
> sat at a PC that lacks a development environment. Haskell EVERYWHERE! >:-D
> 
> Only trouble is... it would have to be a pretty damned big USB stick. 
> DSL is nice, but rather minimal. (Shocker.) KNOPPIX is 700 MB 
> compressed, and decompresses to something like 4 GB...

...The *other* thing I've often wanted to try is making a bootable USB 
flash drive. But apparently that's really hard. And besides, a virtual 
Linux environment has certain advantages. (E.g., you can use the local 
HD if you want.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bbaecf$1@news.povray.org...
>
> That's an... interesting move. Still, I guess if you have 100 virtual 
> servers and they all run Windows, you still need 100 server licenses.

Yup. But you'd also need 100 licences if you had 100 seperate physical 
servers, so it kinda works out cheaper to buy a single large server and 
virtualise several 'servers' onto one where possible. Save on power, 
cooling, space in the server room, probably on hardware. Plus most large 
companies will probably have site-licences so they don't worry about buying 
individual licences like you or I would.

> However, since it appears that you can actually run real software at 
> almost native speeds, suddenly it becomes far more interesting... ;-)
>

Most and almost.
I know that currently SQL Server isn't supported for production usage on any 
form of virtual machine. It may change in the upcoming months with HyperV.

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>> That's an... interesting move. Still, I guess if you have 100 virtual 
>> servers and they all run Windows, you still need 100 server licenses.
> 
> Yup. But you'd also need 100 licences if you had 100 seperate physical 
> servers, so it kinda works out cheaper to buy a single large server and 
> virtualise several 'servers' onto one where possible. Save on power, 
> cooling, space in the server room, probably on hardware.

In other words, a company that wouldn't buy 100 physical servers might 
consider running 100 virtual servers - so M$ still get their cheque.

> Plus most large 
> companies will probably have site-licences so they don't worry about 
> buying individual licences like you or I would.

How exactly does that work? I know how I *thought* it worked, but 
apparently I'm wrong; I heard one of our head IT guys complaining that 
we actually have more Server 2003 Enterprise installations running than 
we're "supposed to".

>> However, since it appears that you can actually run real software at 
>> almost native speeds, suddenly it becomes far more interesting... ;-)
> 
> Most and almost.
> I know that currently SQL Server isn't supported for production usage on 
> any form of virtual machine. It may change in the upcoming months with 
> HyperV.

"Supported" and "working" aren't the same thing. ;-)

It might be that it *works* perfectly well, but the testing department 
haven't assured themselves fully about it yet, so they don't want to 
spend time supporting it until they have.

(Theoretically *every* application should work... depending on how well 
the VM works anyway.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bbb6e7$1@news.povray.org...

>> Plus most large companies will probably have site-licences so they don't 
>> worry about buying individual licences like you or I would.
>
> How exactly does that work? I know how I *thought* it worked, but 
> apparently I'm wrong; I heard one of our head IT guys complaining that we 
> actually have more Server 2003 Enterprise installations running than we're 
> "supposed to".

Licencing's not my specialty. Sounds like you have a certain number of 
licences and you have more servers than that.
A previous company I worked for had a site-wide licence for certain apps. 
Meant they could install as many as they liked and still paid a fixed amount 
every year (support/upgrade contract). It's expensive for smaller companies, 
but as the number of PCs increase, it becomes more reasonable than paying 
for each one.

I don't know if it's still an option. As I said, I don't do licencing if I 
can help it.

>> Most and almost.
>> I know that currently SQL Server isn't supported for production usage on 
>> any form of virtual machine. It may change in the upcoming months with 
>> HyperV.
>
> "Supported" and "working" aren't the same thing. ;-)
>
> It might be that it *works* perfectly well, but the testing department 
> haven't assured themselves fully about it yet, so they don't want to spend 
> time supporting it until they have.

Indeed. The problem with multiple SQL instances in VMs is IO. You can 
allocate CPUs and memory to specific VMs, but there's still a single IO 
channel, and SQL database tend to be IO bound more often than CPU or memory.

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>> How exactly does that work? I know how I *thought* it worked, but 
>> apparently I'm wrong; I heard one of our head IT guys complaining that 
>> we actually have more Server 2003 Enterprise installations running 
>> than we're "supposed to".
> 
> Licencing's not my specialty. Sounds like you have a certain number of 
> licences and you have more servers than that.
> A previous company I worked for had a site-wide licence for certain 
> apps. Meant they could install as many as they liked and still paid a 
> fixed amount every year (support/upgrade contract). It's expensive for 
> smaller companies, but as the number of PCs increase, it becomes more 
> reasonable than paying for each one.

Right. Well we definitely have a company-wide license for Windows XP, 
Office 2003, and a few other bits. I *thought* we had a company-wide 
license for all the products we've licenced, but perhaps not?

> I don't know if it's still an option. As I said, I don't do licencing if 
> I can help it.

Amen! But some of us don't have that luxury. :-S

>> "Supported" and "working" aren't the same thing. ;-)
> 
> Indeed. The problem with multiple SQL instances in VMs is IO. You can 
> allocate CPUs and memory to specific VMs, but there's still a single IO 
> channel, and SQL database tend to be IO bound more often than CPU or 
> memory.

Yeah, database engines by definition are I/O hungry (and memory hungry 
if you want to cache some of that rather than reread it a zillion 
times). Depending on what you're doing it can be CPU-heavy too, but 
mainly just I/O.

I'm sure it'll *work*, but how fast...? ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> 
> But surely if you're going to run a guest OS on the physical host CPU, 
> the host CPU would need to have hardware support for enforcing the host 
> seperation?
> 

There's two ways to do it. The other one needs hardware virtualization 
support (practically any C2D+ and X2+ -processors do have it nowadays) 
and the other one uses somekind of simulation (dunno for sure how - but 
ie. Xen and Linux with slightly modified kernel can do this without 
mentionable powerloss).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> 
> That's apparently a bad idea. The VM would have different hardware than your
> real machine. It's like taking the HD off and booting it on a machine with
> completely different CPU, motherboard, network card, graphics card...
> 
> At least Windows would pop up a dozen "new hardware detected" messages :)
> 

But that's Windows ;). With Linux, you can compile different kernel for 
the VM/emu and ie. create another X.org -config file and use it with the 
VM/emu.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Invisible wrote:
>> VMWare's ESXi is free now, though that's a server-level product, not 

Isn't ESXi a hypervisor like Xen? Meaning that it kind of runs even 
under the main-OS, not on it.

> 
> Until yesterday, the only products I'd heard of where Bochs (only runs 
> on Linux) and VMware (AFAIK that's extremely expensive). Oh, and doesn't 

VMWare has several tools available free of cost. Check the website ;).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Invisible wrote:
> Presumably that requires *very* specialised hardware though?

Yes, but nowadays it's built into all the CPUs already. You couldn't do 
something like this on, say, a 68000 or an 8086.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Invisible wrote:
> I've heard of plenty of VMs that run on Linux, but I wasn't aware that 
> any free ones existed for Windoze.

Go to microsoft.com and do a search. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Invisible wrote:
> the emulated CPU to be maybe 1,000,000x slower than the real one, 

How many machine instructions do you think it takes to execute an 
interpreter for a machine instruction? A hundred maybe, but a million?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Gail wrote:
> Yup. But you'd also need 100 licences if you had 100 seperate physical 
> servers, so it kinda works out cheaper to buy a single large server and 
> virtualise several 'servers' onto one where possible.

A good mainframe these days will run 30,000 images without much problem.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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