virtualbox.org

Hey all

First off, im new to VMs generally, so apologies if any of these questions seem stupid!

We have an old server running sco 5 in production, its 15 years old, i cant get parts and its a constant worry..plans to replace it are there but it will be at least 12 months.

So, i decided to experiment with virtualbox, and surprisingly after about an hour experimenting i had a copy of our sco server complete with all data running as a VM. I havent tested it on the network yet (i need to take the live server down to do that) but i imagine i can get that sorted.

Now i am considering purchasing a commercial license for virtualbox and running a VM on our main windows server, so that i can put our 15 year old unix box out of its misery.

However others have advised me that virtualbox is more for hobbyists and not ready for live servers, even with a commercial licence and that i need to go with a type 1 hypervisor such as esxi.

Is this true? Is the product sufficiently stable?

My main concerns are

1) Will i be able to get it set up so multiple users can telnet to the guest
2) Will our server handle the overhead (it works on my desktop)
3) If i put it on our main server, will it have issues when i do my standard VSS based backups? I do live baremetals, live master and live incrementals on our main server right now and i dont know what will happen if im running a live vm via virtuabox when the backups are run



Cheers

Paying customers tend to use slightly older, proven versions of the VirtualBox software which was been well debugged by the legions of non-paying users of the latest versions. So, I would say that VirtualBox will be quite reliable if you do the same, and what have you got to lose anyway? It's not like you'll be permanently committed or anything. Moving a Windows image between VM platforms is no harder than moving it from hardware --> VM, but at least the worries you have about decrepit hardware can be forgotten.

IMHO: don't ask IT people for unbiased software advice on stuff they've never used. They are trained to give received wisdom back to you. When I started in 2008, the received wisdom was to use Microsoft's Virtual PC - and that was very bad advice.

In answer to your questions: a VM is just a PC. You can do anything on it that you can do on any other PC, provided "any other PC" doesn't involve specialist hardware e.g. unusually fancy graphics cards. I'm not sure what overhead you're referring to, but provided you have plenty of disk space and can dedicate one core to the VM, both host and VM should run fine. I can't imagine Telnet being particularly taxing.

Backing up a live VM from the outside is problematic. Better to run the backup from the inside, like you must be doing on physical hardware. Occasionally you will need an external backup too, e.g. if the externals change.

Avoid snapshots like the plague and you should be fine.

Thanks mpack

With regards to backup.. after getting it working on my desktop... i wanted to test the vm on my lappy at home, so i shut down the vm, copied the vdi to my lappy, and had it working on my lappy in 5 mins flat- once i knew the settings it was very easy

So, i had figured for backup, simply shut the vm then backup the vdi. I know that if i need to restore i would need to redo the settings but its only 5 mins work and id document settings of course

Is there something im missing here?, providing i shut down the vm before copying the vdi, it should be in a consistant state?
EDIT i suppose copying up the entire folder would be smarter..although a cold shutdown 'full clone' only takes a few minutes too?

? You said you needed a live backup, the procedure you describe is not a live backup. If you are happy to shut down the VM and copy the VM folder then that is certainly the best way to go.

Incidentally, moving the bare VDI is not a good way to move a VM. See Howto: Move a VM.

He mpack

Im fine with shutting down the vm for a few mins to back it up...right now i have to go into work early, shut the server down and do a cold bare metal daily..its a nightmare
..with it as a vm i can remote desktop into work and back it up from home etc.

I wouldnt trust vss to backup the folder reliably, after all i do seperate sql backups on our server too.

Thanks for all the help, its appreciated