[mythtv-users] Mythbacked on ESXi 5.0

Raymond Wagner raymond at wagnerrp.com
Mon Oct 24 17:59:49 UTC 2011


On 10/24/2011 13:10, Richard Stanaford wrote:
> - A development environment
> - A VM hosting the corporate base install image from my employer
> (domain registration, certificates, etc.) for work.
> - An experimental network environment utilizing DynaMIPS/Dynagen/GNS3

These I can understand.  They need a specific environment for 
development or testing, which can only be provided by a full VM, or 
physical hardware.

> - VMs for each of my four children.

Why not just give them individual user accounts with no permission to 
touch anything that could be damaged?

> I was under the impression that the whole impetus behind the
> development of virtualization was to consolidate the many, the
> disparate in to one footprint.  "Reduce your management, reduce your
> expenses and footprint on the environment, let virtualization do it
> all for you!"

The reason for consolidation is to reduce your hardware footprint.  You 
can do consolidation with virtualization.  You can do consolidation 
without virtualization.  You can do virtualization without 
consolidation.  They are two wholly independent concepts.

Virtualization took off for two reasons.  When the big kick to start 
consolidating servers happened, virtualization vendors had the only 
products on the market to automate much of that.  When you start 
consolidating multiple servers together, virtualization provides an easy 
solution to the security, stability, and external dependency concerns.

Home users aren't doing anything that need the security between 
different appliances that virtualization offers.  Home users don't need 
the stability (one application fubaring another) that backups of 
important files wouldn't be sufficient for.  External dependency 
conflicts are generally handled well enough by modern distros, and a 
secondary install to a chroot would do exactly the same thing as a VM in 
that regard.


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