Re: Limitations of VMs?

Paul Scott wrote:

I have seen many people extolling the benefits of "working with VMs" for Delphi program development and testing.

Not having thought too deeply about it, I was expecting each hosted VM might behave exactly like a bare-PC-with-only-the-guest-OS-installed (albeit a tad slower than a "native" installation)

Not for the first time, my faith in the wonders of technology may have been unfounded...

VMware Workstation 6 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42130

"Not every facet of the Windows Vista core is supported. It falls short of the higher-end graphical functions in reference to Aero Glass and other 3D based features. Sadly it’s limited to just DirectX 8 support and no further. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 can support Aero, but only via some jiggery-pokery..."

Would anyone with direct experience of working with VMs like to comment on this review and/or on the limitations of other VM products?

--Paul Scott
Information Management Systems
Macclesfield, UK.

I can only comment about our experience, but here is what I can tell you.

At AT&T mobility in my department, nearly all of our Windows servers were virtual using VMWare. No problems.

Nearly all of our Unix instances were virtual, with no problems.

Vista is brand new. Of course the VMs makers may not have every aspect working correctly yet.

The benefit of VMs:

(1) Memory or data Intensive applications and/or critical applications can have their own OS dedicated to that one application. Benefit: No other applications outside applications that would normally running on a single instance server. would be responsible in bringing down the m/d intensive or critical application. This is very important with Server based applications and/or terminal based applications.

(2) Consolidation of Hardware: Instead of 5 servers, each with an OS, you can choose to buy one redundant server with multiple CPUs and lots of RAM and create VMs based upon need on that one box.

(3) You can use Unix related hardware (SPARC, RISC) to run Windows and Unix on the one box in separate VM instances.

(4) Most of the time VM based OS instances are actually faster than dedicated instances of the OS. This is dependent upon hardware, of course.

(5) Start up of VM instances and recovery are usually faster than stand-alone systems, since the hardware itself is already up and running, even if a VM instance needs a reboot/repair, etc.

(6) Drive arrays can be shared, including Optical storage.

(7) You can utilize Hardware more efficiently. For instance DEV and QA could run in separate VMs, but on the same box, saving on Hardware costs.

There are other reasons as well, but these are the main advantages.






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