What exactly do you do with Virtual Machines?

thehappyone

Sorry for asking this I'm a complete novice.

Let's say I install VMware or Hyper-V, I have a couple VM's running on the host PC. Then what?

How do I get these VM's running on another monitor in another room. How do I connect peripherals.

The closest I have come was a wikipedia page that mentioned "Guest software", but it didn't elaborate.

Is what I'm asking even possible, cause I'm thinking that's the sole point of virtualisation. To have one powerfull workstation divide it's resources (RAM, CPU) to many other users with their own monitors.

Lexluethar

In a home environment it doesn't make a lot of sense to virtualize unless you need to run multiple servers.

There are numerous reasons to virtualize, here are the key ones IMO:
1. Condensing hardware - now instead of having one server per application you can run 5, 10 or even 50 virtual machines on one physical server. This of the space savings. Now i have one server that can run what 10 years ago would have had to take 50 servers to run. This not only saves on space, but energy costs.
2. Resource usage - VMware and Hyper-V are intelligent and you can fine tune resources to each virtual machines needs. This means you can be a lot more efficient with resources as well.
3. High availability, hypervisors can now fail over to one another if configured properly (VMware it's called HA or FT), both have pro's and cons but both have the ability to reduce your down time on a server (FT to zero) if the physical equipment it was running on failed.
4. Maintenance - before if you had a bad stick or RAM or hard drive you had to turn off the server which meant you had to take down the application that ran on that server. With hypervisors you can now move workload from one physical server to another without having to take the application offline.

You need to install the hypervisor (VMware or Hyper-v) on physical hardware. Once you install that you can then configure and access the hypervisor and virtual machines from a console, or if networked properly from another device. Form a network standpoint these devices act no different than another physical server on your network.

thehappyone

Let me get this straight.

You're telling me that the main point of virtualisation is to run several VM's on one host computer so that each VM can run a specific application i.e. FTP, DNS, etc.

And virtiualisation is NOT to have one workstation in an office that provides recources such as RAM and CPU to other staff.

TomkoTech

What is it you are specifically wanting to do?

The goal wouldn't be to say give 4 family members their own VM. And even if that were your goal, to connect to said VM you still need some type of physical device. You can't just hook up a monitor and say here you go.

What my company does is provide IaaS. We host multiple companies entire environment. They can then connect to their companies VM(s) from literally any device anywhere in the world with an internet connection. On the backend every server we run from the AD, DC, Netscaler, every different role server has it's own VM that it is running off of. These are all loaded in HA on multiple physical servers that we "rent" from a large data center. Which means we defer the cost and maintenance of the physical hardware itself to someone else and it also allows us virtually unlimited growth potential. As we need more physical resources the data center adds more physical machines to our available cluster.

cyberguypr

It's all about pooling and sharing resources. A real life example is when you are studying for a cert like MCSE you need multiple machines for your domain controllers, file servers, VPN, Direct Access, certificate authority, etc. Year ago thismean a whole bunch of physical hardware. Today it means a small, powerful machine that can host all of those. You save on power, cooling, space, wiring, etc.

At home I have a number of systems running at any given time including my full security lab (12 machines), PBX, CCTV, Plex server, and many others running on just two physical hosts. Again, from a dozen machines, you reduce your footprint to just a few.

OP, what you describe is a mainframe-terminal model. The mainframe does all the processing while the endpoints are just dumb terminals that just take user input.

TomkoTech

thehappyone wrote: »

You're telling me that the main point of virtualisation is to run several VM's on one host computer so that each VM can run a specific application i.e. FTP, DNS, etc.

And virtiualisation is NOT to have one workstation in an office that provides recources such as RAM and CPU to other staff.

It COULD be the point. But you still need a physical device to connect to said host machine. You could use WYSE or HP thin clients, or really cheap PCs as your end user device and set up a terminal services environment which would do what you are proposing.

thehappyone

Tomkotech - you're right my goal is give family members their own VM. But like you said in your
second post I'd still need device with a network card to connect to the host.

cyberguypr - you're right, I have a mainframe at college and work, and I thought I
could recreate this environment using virtualisation. LMAO.

Thank's for clearing it up guys. I get the point of virtualisation now. IaaS sounds very lucrative, and the full security labs
is interesting, but I need to a take few steps back and focus on obtaining my ccna.

TomkoTech

thehappyone wrote: »

cyberguypr - you're right, I have a mainframe at college and work, and I thought I
could recreate this environment using virtualisation. LMAO.

You could recreate this at home. But the cost would be outrageous as you would need to pay for the licensing to do so. Or if you were using "free" licenses you'd have to blow everything away and recreate it every few months with new temp licensing. However at work and school you still have some device that you utilize to connect to the terminal servers.

If you are looking to do something with shared resources(such as storage or printing) that is fairly simple without getting into virtualization.

markulous

Yeah, if you're wanting to run a VDI environment, you can do that too with thin/zero clients. You can look at something like Horizon/View. Just really depends what you want, but overall you're doing it to reduce hardware and make your environment easier to manage.

cyberguypr

That idea is fine and dandy until one of the users tries to run a game or something more advanced that requires intensive resources that can't really make it to the endpoint. If your daughter wants to play solitaire, cool. If your son wants to play GTA 5 in max settings, there goes the plan.

thehappyone

TomkoTech wrote: »

If you are looking to do something with shared resources(such as storage or printing) that is fairly simple without getting into virtualization.

Point me in the right direction if you don't mind. Let's say I have a PC in room A. It has an i5 and 32GB of RAM and 180 days of server 2012. Let's say it's connected to a router, which is connected to a switch in room B. And to that switch you have the usual connections, ps4, smart TV etc. What would be the cheapest way to access windows on that TV which is in room B for those 180 days.

TomkoTech

thehappyone wrote: »

What would be the cheapest way to access windows on that TV which is in room B for those 180 days.

If your goal is to simply use the TV as a monitor you could just use a wireless keyboard and mouse with a Chromecast hooked up to the TV. Or you could get a raspberrypi and configure that to utilize applications/data used on the server, but as Cyberguypr states, it isn't going to be able to stream a game like GTA V.

thehappyone

TomkoTech wrote: »

If your goal is to simply use the TV as a monitor you could just use a wireless keyboard and mouse with a Chromecast hooked up to the TV. Or you could get a raspberrypi and configure that to utilize applications/data used on the server, but as Cyberguypr states, it isn't going to be able to stream a game like GTA V.

Yeah I've thought about the raspberry pi. I just wanted to do it in a fancier way and utilise my extra ram. Thank's for all the input anyway guys. Appreciate it.

nascar_paul

I get the impression that you may benefit from investigating something along the lines of MythTV or Kodi. They're inexpensive ways to turn powerful computers into media/application servers that may do what you're looking for. If what you're looking for is a clean, simple and consistent interface for multiple end points (i.e.: televisions, computers) that you can use to share media and gaming.