RE: [wlug] New Workstation Hardware Advice
I am only familiar with VMWare. But open to new ideas. So this is what I do: A customer wants wot make xyz work with abc in his specific environment. So I build the system in a VMWare session and prove it works before going out to the site and implimenting the change, a nice way to do things on a limited budget. Also, I have pre-built machines in a virtual lab that I use to test new software for campatibility reasons etc. If there is another way to do that, then that would be great. It would also be nice to say I have a desktop with 4GB of RAM, but we can get into that later;-) Gund -----Original Message----- From: Oliver Jones [mailto:oliver(a)deeper.co.nz] Sent: Wed 8/09/2004 12:40 To: Waikato Linux Users Group Cc: Subject: Re: [wlug] New Workstation Hardware Advice > Apart form the favourable reviews of NVidia graphics cards here, are > there any preferences to motherboards? IDE RAID controllers? I have > been living in laptop land for a while now and have lost contact with > desktop options and hardware. > > Ideally, the desktop will have > > 3GHz Processor or thereabouts > 4GB RAM > 2x120GB hard drives (one for mirror / backup) > DVD Writer Perhaps you would be best with an Athlon 64 based system? Not sure how well nVidia works with 64bit Linux though. From what I know (which is little) they have a very fast FSB etc. If you only want to go 32bit then 800Mhz FSB P4's are quite nice. I have a P4 2.6Ghz Intel i865 based system under my desk. It performs quite nicely. > The machine will primarily be used for VMs, so throughput would be > nice and the RAM _needs_ to be big. By VMs I take it you mean Virtual Machines. Are you planning on using User Model Linux or VMWare? Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 13:22, Gund Wehsling wrote:
I am only familiar with VMWare.
Well VMWare is the best virtual machine "emulator" for Windows and Linux systems. I have a license for it myself but don't use it much anymore.
But open to new ideas.
UserMode Linux is a "free" way of doing Linux Virtual Machines. More difficult but good for a server environment.
A customer wants wot make xyz work with abc in his specific environment. So I build the system in a VMWare session and prove it works before going out to the site and implimenting the change, a nice way to do things on a limited budget. Also, I have pre-built machines in a virtual lab that I use to test new software for campatibility reasons etc.
Sounds like you're using the right tool for the job then. VMWare is good for that. Especially with it's HDD changes rollback support. Makes testing very easy. You probably don't need 4GB of RAM to do this though. Unless you're running heaps of instances of VMWare at the same time that is. Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com
A customer wants wot make xyz work with abc in his specific environment. So I build the system in a VMWare session and prove it works before going out to the site and implimenting the change, a nice way to do things on a limited budget. Also, I have pre-built machines in a virtual lab that I use to test new software for campatibility reasons etc.
Sounds like you're using the right tool for the job then. VMWare is good for that. Especially with it's HDD changes rollback support. Makes testing very easy. ...
I did a short stint where people were doing exactly what Gund plans to do. 2 GB barely cut it. I remember Oliver, you said you might have a look at UML. Did you have the chance? How did it go? Cheers, Sid.
I did a short stint where people were doing exactly what Gund plans to do. 2 GB barely cut it.
I remember Oliver, you said you might have a look at UML. Did you have the chance? How did it go?
UML is fine for most linux oriented purposes. There are some performance issues which can apparently be mitigated by patching the host kernel, although I've not really tested this one myself. Linux on an unpatched machine runs ok, but if you do any disk IO inside the UML, it hoses the host.
I did a short stint where people were doing exactly what Gund plans to do. 2 GB barely cut it.
I guess it all depends on how many instances of VMWare you run at a time and how much ram you allocate to them.
I remember Oliver, you said you might have a look at UML. Did you have the chance? How did it go?
No. Not yet. Regards -- Oliver Jones » Director » oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 Deeper Design Limited » +64 (7) 377 3328 » www.deeperdesign.com
* Oliver Jones <oliver(a)deeper.co.nz> [2004-09-08 10:15]:
UserMode Linux is a "free" way of doing Linux Virtual Machines. More difficult but good for a server environment.
It's not exactly a point-n-click setup, if you mean that, but it's not difficult at all -- roughly as much work as configuring a simple daemon, I'd say. The one (huge) advantage it has over VMware is speed, since there's no emulation involved. UML is not the only option to do something like this: see http://www.wlug.org.nz/VirtualPrivateServer Regards, -- Aristotle "If you can't laugh at yourself, you don't take life seriously enough."
participants (5)
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A. Pagaltzis -
Daniel Lawson -
Gund Wehsling -
Oliver Jones -
s swami