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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)
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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)
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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.
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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...
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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 :)
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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)
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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)
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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.
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>> 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. ;-)
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] dev null> 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
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"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
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>>> 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*
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>> 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.
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"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.
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> 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.
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>> 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!)
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>> 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*
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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*
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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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Gail wrote:
>
> Then, of course, there's Hyper-V built into Server 2008.
Which, according to Hype(tm) is Ultimately New Technology Innovation By
Microsoft(R), since it uses the Brand-New Never-Before-Seen hypervisor
technology (which is, still according to the same Hype(tm), pretty much
similar as in Xen and AFAIK with ESXi, but apparently they don't count,
since Innovating Sells).
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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Gail wrote:
>
> 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.
With Xen you can allocate whole disks or RAID-arrays or whatever and
amount X of RAM to be used straightly by the VM. In my experience the
lag is mostly unnoticeable (yes, it probably will be more noticeable
with DB-server, which I'm not running on VMs (well, there are MySQL
installations on at least 2 VM's, but they're really small DBs), but
depending on DB-size etc the saved cost of another HW can possibly give
you even better HW for that one machine to have better IOs for the DB,
it's not purely black and white).
Then again, MS surely don't want to support Xen, while they're working
on HyperV - no wonder SQL Server ain't supported on such
competitor-software ;).
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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"Eero Ahonen" <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote in message
news:48bc0684$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>>
>> Then, of course, there's Hyper-V built into Server 2008.
>
> Which, according to Hype(tm) is Ultimately New Technology Innovation By
> Microsoft(R), since it uses the Brand-New Never-Before-Seen hypervisor
> technology (which is, still according to the same Hype(tm), pretty much
> similar as in Xen and AFAIK with ESXi, but apparently they don't count,
> since Innovating Sells).
>
No one ever suggested that MS's marketing dept was 'honest'. I've heard a
couple of MS developers complaining about the massaged facts the marketing
dept was pushing.
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Darren New wrote:
> How many machine instructions do you think it takes to execute an
> interpreter for a machine instruction?
How about, hmm, "A LOT"?
The IA32 instruction set is a twisted tangle with no reason or rhyme to
it. The op-codes follow no particular pattern. The instruction lengths
very widely. What with MMX, 3D NOW!, SSE, SSE2 and so on, there's dozens
of registers of all different shapes and sizes. And we haven't even
talked about all the emulation required for the I/O devices...
> A hundred maybe, but a million?
Last time I checked, the IA32 instruction set is *very* complex. I doubt
it's got any simpler since then...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> 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. :-)
Yeah, if I had *wanted* to find one, this would be the first stage.
However, as I said, I assumed that any VM would be absurdly slow and
therefore unusable, so I didn't bother looking for one. (Not to mention
that it's not immediately obvious just how useful these things are until
you've played with one...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> 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.
So when you say "works on any reasonably modern PC", what you *actually*
mean is "works on any brand new bleeding-edge PC"?
For example, it wouldn't work on the Pentium-III server in my server
room. (?)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Gail wrote:
> No one ever suggested that MS's marketing dept was 'honest'. I've heard
> a couple of MS developers complaining about the massaged facts the
> marketing dept was pushing.
One might argue that if MS were to be "honest" about their products,
they'd never sell any because they all suck so much...
...especially if that "one" happens to be a Linux advocate. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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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?)
And I'll give another nod to VirtualBox. It's free, and running Windows
on it was a breeze. I assume the same is the case the other way round.
Haven't used VMWare products. They're more well known, though.
--
Computer Lie #1: You'll never use all that disk space.
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
anl
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"Eero Ahonen" <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote in message
news:48bc0856$1@news.povray.org...
but
> depending on DB-size etc the saved cost of another HW can possibly give
> you even better HW for that one machine to have better IOs for the DB,
> it's not purely black and white).
No, it's not.
In my experience though, the majority of DB servers that have bottlenecks
have IO ones, even on physical machines. Virtualising those means needing
separate IO paths, separate physical raid arrays, etc or the virtuals will
compeate with one another for IO. I know that all the SQL MVPs who have
given an opinion on this have recommend not virtualising a production DB,
especially not a large one with lots of activity.
I'd happily virtualise a dev or test environment. Not happy about doing it
to a heavily-utilised prod server though. Not right now.
> Then again, MS surely don't want to support Xen, while they're working on
> HyperV - no wonder SQL Server ain't supported on such competitor-software
> ;).
Well, VMWare's joined the SVVP
(http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm), so
there'll have to be some level of support. How much remains to be seen.
SQL's not supported at all on existing MS virtualisation products (virtual
server, virtual PC) and it's not currently supported on Hyper-V (which has
been available for a month or so)
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:48bc09bb$1@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:
>> 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.
>
> So when you say "works on any reasonably modern PC", what you *actually*
> mean is "works on any brand new bleeding-edge PC"?
No, he means any modern PC.
> For example, it wouldn't work on the Pentium-III server in my server room.
> (?)
Sure it would.
Virtual PC requires minimum a 400 MHz Pentium-compatible processor.
VMWare version 5 (previous version) requires a 400MHz processor from the
following list:
# Intel: Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M (including
computers with CentrinoT mobile technology), XeonT (including "Prestonia")
# AMDT: AthlonT, Athlon MP, Athlon XP, DuronT, OpteronT
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:48bc0a2a$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>
>> No one ever suggested that MS's marketing dept was 'honest'. I've heard a
>> couple of MS developers complaining about the massaged facts the
>> marketing dept was pushing.
>
> One might argue that if MS were to be "honest" about their products,
> they'd never sell any because they all suck so much...
Not all of them.
You're generalising to a hell of a lot of stuff that you've probably never
used based on your experiences with a couple.
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Gail wrote:
>
> No, it's not.
> In my experience though, the majority of DB servers that have
> bottlenecks have IO ones, even on physical machines. Virtualising those
> means needing separate IO paths, separate physical raid arrays, etc or
> the virtuals will compeate with one another for IO.
Yep, but think about a small firm, just started. They want reliable
hardware, they need 2 servers, one for databases and one for something
else that's not so IO-sensitive (authenticating etc). Now, would they
get better performance for the DB's by buying 2 individual servers or by
using all that money on one server, from which they could utilize most
of the IO from the DB-engine?
I'd probably go with the latter one. Probably, not surely.
> I know that all the
> SQL MVPs who have given an opinion on this have recommend not
> virtualising a production DB, especially not a large one with lots of
> activity.
> I'd happily virtualise a dev or test environment. Not happy about doing
> it to a heavily-utilised prod server though. Not right now.
Yep, there's a huge scale on the db-sized used over the globe. Even if
you'll count out the 2-5 -table one-query-per-day -style ones I
mentioned earlier.
> Well, VMWare's joined the SVVP
> (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm), so
> there'll have to be some level of support. How much remains to be seen.
Ahh, nice.
> SQL's not supported at all on existing MS virtualisation products
> (virtual server, virtual PC)
As said, AFAIK those are the ones that run over the main OS, they really
can't pass any unemulated/virtualized command straightly to the hardware.
> and it's not currently supported on Hyper-V
> (which has been available for a month or so)
Hyper-V is still pretty new and at least I wouldn't be sure if they have
actually had the time to test it enough. I'd guess the support on
Hyper-V would get better after some time.
--
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
http://www.zbxt.net
aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid
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