where professional software development comes naturally

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Virtualisation for Developers

What, Why, Where?

Liam Westleytwitter: westleyl

liam.westley@tigernews.co.ukhttp://geekswithblogs.net/twickers

http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers

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’

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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)

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You may have used a VM before ...

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What? – some jargon

• ‘Host’ operating system

• ‘Guest’ operating system

• Virtual Machine (‘VM’)

• ‘Additions’ software

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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

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Why? – for developers

• Reduce hardware dependencies

• Creation of flexible development environments

• Support legacy environments

• The ultimate undo tool

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How back far can you go ...

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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

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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

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Legacy XP / VS2003 in action ...

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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

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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

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Testing new software ...

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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)

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Hyper-V Server ...

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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

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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

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Dual CPU – no problems ...

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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

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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

where professional software development comes naturally

http://www.tigernews.co.uk

Virtualisation for Developers

What, Why, Where?

Liam Westleytwitter: westleyl

liam.westley@tigernews.co.ukhttp://geekswithblogs.net/twickers