Has the time come for development on a virtual machine?
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I've done some limited testing under Vista 32bit with an XP 32bit VM and was impressed. Enough so that I too am considering moving all development over to a VM. It sure would make it easier to move everything over when replacing a laptop or desktop machine. Marc
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I have used VMs on my Mac to develop a web sites/services to be consumed the Mac OSX and I don't mind the speed.
John C wrote:
choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting
Agreed!
John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I have a build machine on a VM (Windows 2008/Hyper-V) and it is reasonably fast.
Proud to be a CPHog user
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
From what I've seen you would have to get the best hardware available (new Intel i7 processor, DDR3 ram, 10k SATA and/or RAID hard drives).
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting
The one assumption I could offer that would de-hazify this is that a 64bit OS would have access to all the RAM, and thus could allocate and map a full 4Gb to each of the guest 32bit OSes. A 32bit host OS on the other hand would only have access to the first 4Gb of RAM, so everything over that would go wasted and unusable by itself or any of the guests. (This is only an assumption, I haven't tested it)
Simon
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
Every time I try that I run into the problem that disk speed is significantly slower in virtual machines and as a result build times are 50% longer. Although I have not tried this with a machine with 8GB+ of memory perhaps with this amount of ram the problem would be diminished.
John
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I may have got the wrong end of the stick, I often do, but I believe Vistaian Grouse:) (sorry!) does. Im mentally trying to do the time difference in my head it might be a little early down under.
Henry Minute Never read Medical books. You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure.
I've reached that point a while ago.
John C wrote:
doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I've moved some of my development over to a vm, and while performance of the vm are a little lagging, it is not enough to warrant too many gripes and rants.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John, I do development via a couple different VMs for various reasons, on my current machine, and have no problems doing it that way. My machine specs are as follows: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running @ 2.33GHz with 4GB ram and a 250mb STAT drive. I use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and have a Vista Business VM and two XP VMs with different versions of Office/VSTO, a Win2K VM I use for backwards compatibility testing, from time-to-time. I do VSTO development work on the Vista and two XP VMs under VS 2005 and 2008, with no problems. I assign 2mb to the Vista VM and 1mb to the XP vms. Works like a champ; would probably work even faster if I had more ram to assign, but my point is, with what I have, it works ... The ONLY issues I have had, is attempting to burn an ISO image with open VMs will almost certainly result in a BSOD; so don't cross the streams, it would be bad. Otherwise, have at it, works just fine.
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John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I've done some limited testing under Vista 32bit with an XP 32bit VM and was impressed. Enough so that I too am considering moving all development over to a VM. It sure would make it easier to move everything over when replacing a laptop or desktop machine. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
It sure would make it easier to move everything over when replacing a laptop or desktop machine.
That's exactly what I'm thinking, also in the case of hardware failure getting back up and running would be easy peasy. The way the virtual machines are improving all the time (well VmWare at least, haven't looked at Virtual PC or others in a while) it just seems like it would make sense. I was just doing some testing on an XP Pro 64 bit hosted on my Vista 32 bit and the performance was really good which led me to consider this.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Every time I try that I run into the problem that disk speed is significantly slower in virtual machines and as a result build times are 50% longer. Although I have not tried this with a machine with 8GB+ of memory perhaps with this amount of ram the problem would be diminished.
John
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John C wrote:
64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting
The one assumption I could offer that would de-hazify this is that a 64bit OS would have access to all the RAM, and thus could allocate and map a full 4Gb to each of the guest 32bit OSes. A 32bit host OS on the other hand would only have access to the first 4Gb of RAM, so everything over that would go wasted and unusable by itself or any of the guests. (This is only an assumption, I haven't tested it)
Simon
Yeah exactly what I was thinking, but beyond that perhaps the choice of OS would be important as well. For example I'm pretty sure VMWare allows any host operating system and any guest operating system of the ones they support so perhaps the best host operating system is some flavour of incredibly stripped down Linux 64 bit version.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I may have got the wrong end of the stick, I often do, but I believe Vistaian Grouse:) (sorry!) does. Im mentally trying to do the time difference in my head it might be a little early down under.
Henry Minute Never read Medical books. You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Yeah but he's only doing it because he's become a Mac cultist. ;) Every time I've seen him asked about why the Mac he comes up with the typical cult of Mac responses "It just *feels* better" etc.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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Yeah but he's only doing it because he's become a Mac cultist. ;) Every time I've seen him asked about why the Mac he comes up with the typical cult of Mac responses "It just *feels* better" etc.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Mac cultist
Is that where you go to get fitted for a new Mac.
Last modified: 1hr 1min after originally posted --
Henry Minute Never read Medical books. You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
At the moment, I'm happily using a VPC for all my dev. With VMWare and 4GB (I was thinking Linux, but I went Vista due to a head injury), both XP and Server 2003 are happy (it's also great on a MacBook Pro). While I don't do a load of hard core dev, VS has been as productive as it ever is. Going 64 bit and more RAM would be even better, I think. The other benefit I get from that is that I have my main machine fairly clean of Betaware, and I can keep my VM RASed into their network for work, without disturbing my main machine or connection. I also briefly considered using one of the hypervisor thingies (like HyperV or ESX server), but didn't like the fact you'd need to administer them from yet another machine. Other people's mileage may vary.
-------------- TTFN - Kent
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I've been developing and deploying on VMs since 06. Oodles of ram and fast drives are the key imo. As far as the host OS goes I've found VMWare to be pretty robust across PCs, MACs, and linux. A 64bit host is pretty great also in that you can host 64 bit and 32 bit clients.
Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long
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John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I've done some limited testing under Vista 32bit with an XP 32bit VM and was impressed. Enough so that I too am considering moving all development over to a VM. It sure would make it easier to move everything over when replacing a laptop or desktop machine. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
It sure would make it easier to move everything over when replacing a laptop or desktop machine.
Also the ability to achive off legacy technology and still have it available in the future in case issues appear. I still have one site running on ASP.NET 1.1 and do not have the time nor desire to upgrade it. It is handy to use the VM to keep Visual Studio 2002 around for that site :)
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Monopoly Money, sure, let’s print more! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I think VMs are the way to go for numerous reasons:
- t is easy to move to another machine in the event of failure or if you have to take work with you via a laptop.
- When moving to new technology you can keep a working legacy environment in the event of maintenance or additional features to legacy applications.
- You can clone the VM and then try out new service packs and updates without the risk of hosing your current development. Some client environments may have a restriction on the service packs they are allowed to use (such was the case a while back with one using Microsoft Dynamics could not handle a .NET update so additional apps had could not use the update).
- Viruses and Trojans usually do not spread to the VMs just in the event someone does something stupid on the machine during personal use.
- Makes it easy to keep backups or even versioning by saving off a VM at critical changes.
- Keeps a clear separation between personal and business use
Even if it is a performance hit, it is worth it to have all the above benefits. I can wait a few seconds when compiling for all the good I get out of it. It would still be worth it if the only benefit was the ability to move the VM to a new machine and be developing again in a matter of minutes when hardware crashes!
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Monopoly Money, sure, let’s print more! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
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I've been kicking around the idea of doing future development on a virtual machine once I get the major release out in the spring that I'm working on now. It's been two years with the current quad core pc, time to put it out to pasture or at least wipe the hard drive and start fresh again. My theory is you get a kick ass fast computer with 64bit processor and oodles of ram, choose a 64bit host operating system on the hazy criteria that it be the best for vm hosting (fastest to boot? Most efficient? Linux, Windows...not sure.) then create a 32bit virtual machine for general development with whatever is the best operating system for development and a set of others for testing under each operating system. Plus, since my dev machine is also my main personal use machine I guess a separate vm strictly for personal use. I'm thinking that we've almost reached the point where this is feasible (fast enough), but not sure. Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
John C wrote:
Is anyone doing their main development in a vm and how's the speed by comparison?
I did it a lot on my previous job - the primary dev OS was Linux, but it had to run on Windows as well, and plus all the office software was Windows-only. Therefore I was running Linux on a VMWare image. The speed was not an issue at all, but setting a breakpoint with gdb would occasionaly bring the vm image to halt, and that was really annoying. Eventualy they gave me a separate machine for Linux development. On the current job, I use Hyper-V to debug XP-only bugs and it works fine.