** Reply to message from Joshua Penix <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:23:18 -0700 (PDT)
> As time goes on and the feature sets of all these systems stabilize, then the > APIs and documentation will too. Subsequently more development effort will be > able to focus on what are currently "edge cases," and virtualization will move > toward being an expected feature of every OS and at some point probably fade > into the background as something that "just works." Virtualization is really a boon to Windows shops and will probably find its way as a standard part of the Windows OS( desktop and server ). It is really not needed so much in the *nix world except for vendors, ISP's, etc who like to keep their customers server processes quite separate from others. But when the OS has good memory management and a robust security system, as Lan mentioned, you can run more than one service on the OS. Windows, well this whole VM craze started when IBM started kicking but wrapping Windows physical servers into one mainframe running dozens and dozens of virtual machines. There was actually a big savings by consolidating all those x86 box into one large one with a ton of uptime and I/O protection( raid/hotplug/etc ). FYI, from what I heard, virtualization on the PC platform started when a Russian company was hired to provide a way to run OS/2 apps with Windows apps. I believe it was later to become Parallels. But you know what, virtual machines are also a cool way to install Linux applications on Windows. If the application is browser based and has all the management features in the browser, it's easier to install a VM and be isolated from all the issues of putting pieces on/in Windows. For instance, if a Windows shop wants a bug tracking system, a Trac based VM can do the trick and they won't really know or care it is Linux under the hood. Doug -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
