1 / 22

Virtualisation for Developers

Virtualisation for Developers. What, Why, Where?. Liam Westley twitter: westleyl. liam.westley@tigernews.co.uk http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers. Who ?. Liam Westley; owner of Tiger Computer Services Ltd Broadcast Television and Healthcare solutions

Download Presentation

Virtualisation for Developers

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Virtualisation for Developers What, Why, Where? Liam Westley twitter: westleyl liam.westley@tigernews.co.uk http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers

  2. Who ? • Liam Westley; owner of Tiger Computer Services Ltd • Broadcast Television and Healthcare solutions • A user of virtual machines ever since Connectix was bought by Microsoft and Virtual PC 2004 was included in the MSDN subscription • Doesn’t believe virtualisation contains the letter ‘z’

  3. What? • In general terms, a virtual machine is software that emulates another computer, including all the basic hardware components • Some even emulate the actual CPU • Can either run as a standalone program (Virtual PC, VMware Player, Virtual Box) or a set of services (Virtual Server) or as the base host o/s (VMware ESX, Hyper-V)

  4. You may have used a VM before ...

  5. What? – some jargon • ‘Host’ operating system • ‘Guest’ operating system • Virtual Machine (‘VM’) • ‘Additions’ software

  6. What? – ‘Free’ tools • Virtual PC 2007 (XP, Vista) • Virtual Server 2005 R2 (Server 2003) • Hyper-V Server, Hyper-V role in Server 2008 (x64 CPU only) • VMware Player 2.5 (lots, see notes) • Virtual Box 2.0 (XP, Vista, 2003) • VMware Server 2, VMWare ESXi 3.5 • 64-bit guest support; Hyper-V, VMware, Virtual Box

  7. Why? – for developers • Reduce hardware dependencies • Creation of flexible development environments • Support legacy environments • The ultimate undo tool

  8. How back far can you go ...

  9. Where? – ‘Clean’ images • Clean operating systems with minimal service packs and selected Windows Updates • Test your setup programs and/or installation scripts • Great for system and user guides, screen captures, and for training end users

  10. Where? – Legacy applications • Legacy operating systems; Win 9x, NT4, Windows 2000 • Legacy service packs; XP SP1 • Legacy languages; VB6, VS2003! • Browser compatibility; testing against IE6, IE7, IE8 beta 2 • Windows Media player; older versions, older codecs

  11. Legacy XP / VS2003 in action ...

  12. Where? – Hardware consolidation • Multiple build servers on the same physical hardware • Development servers to both test and provide demo software for agile development • Reduced hardware requirement for IIS Network Load Balancing and SQL Server mirroring

  13. Where? – ... and much more. • Internationalisation – ability to test on multiple locales • Breaking the 3Gb memory barrier by using a 64-bit host • Scale and test distributed processing (i.e. Selenium Grid) • Safer testing of beta/RC software • Replicate client configurations

  14. Testing new software ...

  15. Hyper-V Server • Minimal version of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V role • Install Hyper-V Server • Install management tools on a different PC • This is the suggested future solution for developers (replacing Virtual PC and Virtual Server)

  16. Hyper-V Server ...

  17. Tips and tricks 1 • Keep your host and guest on different discs • Install additions • BIOS – make sure you enable hardware virtualisation • Specify large partition sizes, they auto grow anyway • Disable hibernation - it’s a big file

  18. Tips and tricks 2 • Use NewSID (sysinternals) or SysPrep (Microsoft) when duplicating o/s images • Disable screen savers, no really! • Multi monitors, use remote connection with /span setting • VMware - http://easyvmx.com/ to create VM files for VM player

  19. Dual CPU – no problems ...

  20. Final thoughts and gotchas • Don’t abuse VMs, i.e. don’t create entire development PC images to avoid configuration scripts • You can’t run competing virtual systems simultaneously ... • ... that includes the Smart Device (PocketPC) emulator • Start getting more familiar with network configuration

  21. Resources • www.microsoft.com/virtualpc www.microsoft.com/virtualserver www.microsoft.com/hyperv • www.vmware.com/player • www.easyvmx.com • www.virtualbox.org • blogs.msdn.com/Virtual_PC_Guy/ • blogs.technet.com/jhoward • www.mvug.co.uk

  22. Virtualisation for Developers What, Why, Where? Liam Westley twitter: westleyl liam.westley@tigernews.co.uk http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers

More Related