Use for a Virtual Machine

[Joose]

Im starting to use VMware a bit at werk, and I have never touched it before. I find the best way for me to learn new bits of software is to dick about with them at home, but rather than just start creating VM's for shits and giggles, I thought it would be nice if I could put them to use for something. I'm coming up blank though.

Can anyone suggest a practical use for virtual machines in a home network? Something I can actually make it do, that will be of any benefit at all? Doesnt really matter if its something that there are easier/better ways of doing either, I just want something to make my dicking about have some sort of aim.

[Stoat]

Native DOS/OldWin games, as opposed to DOSbox
Internet Explorers 3-6
All of the Linux distributions, all at once!
If you've got kids or non-technical people around you can set up a auto-reverting OS you can't do any damage to (I think Windows had this built in at one point- called SteadyState - but they discontinued it).
You can relive Active Desktop in preparation for Windows 8.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Make your elaborate media dealy into something that'll fit on a usb stick, and dump files onto a shared drive on the host machine?

Not that I'm too lazy to work that stuff out for myself or anything

[spoodie]

VirtualBox is a reasonable free alternative to VMWare. It's fine for desktop virtualisation.

I've used it for running Windows XP on OSX and recently setup my home PC with Ubuntu + VirtualBox, so I can do development on the automated install processes we use at work.

Another use that springs to mind: An isolated machine that you can test potentially dodgy software on, which you may have swept up.

[friznit]

Build VM
Install WoW
Clone VM x 10
HCI Link VMs
Play WoW
Sell level 85 characters
Profit!

Or build a vServer and run a dedi machine on it for your favourite FPS, then build a VM and join the server.

Get VMWare Lab Manager (about to be discontinued cos they're moving to lolCloud but there's still a trial version on the website), create a fenced network, make a vServer, install Lab Manager on it, create a fenced network, make a vServer, install Lab Manager on it, create a fenced network, make a vServer...melt your brain (and your PC)

Actually the tricky bit of vSphere is handling the SAN allocation and ESX Host loading, which I'm guessing you can't do at home. The front end bit of vCenter 4.1 is pretty straight forward.

On a simple level, VMs are quite fun to see how much shit you can turn off in Windows and still have it run sensibly.

[Dog Pants]

Go hunting malware on it! Then tell us what you find and how broken the VM becomes.

[FatherJack]

I like to play with virtual machines, I have at least seven on this PC and use them for various things.

Microsoft Virtual PC is very similar in operation to VMWare Workstation but only really useful for Windows installs. I think you can get a demo of the ESX VMware stuff, but AFAIK all the extra bits are deployment tools for barebones systems and web-based access panels which perform the same functions as Workstation.

I have "representative builds" of a number of OSes for testing things on a clean system including 3 XPs with all the critical updates except having IE6, 7 and 8.

One thing that's easy to do with VMs, but not so easy with real machines is to have a play with Clustering - making identical machines (usually a prerequisite) adding "hardware" such as extra network cards dedicated to heartbeat traffic and shared disks for a quorum are all done in a few clicks and you have something you wouldn't otherwise get to play with unless you happen to have have a spare SAN at home.

The different OSes have very different views as to what clustering is which can be interesting to find out. Linux variants are probably the purest form of clustering as you can run (mostly) any process in cluster mode and the processing power of all the machines in the cluster is used. Windows servers usually favour the "failover" type of clustering where only cluster-aware applications can be installed into the cluster as virtual resources, run on a single machine at a time, but switch to another one if the first goes down. Novell clusters operate similarly but have some additional clever (and fun) bits such as split brains and poison pills.

If that's not nearly hardcore enough, then install a directory such as AD, eDir or LDAP and have it replicate across your VMs. If you go the AD route, why not install Exchange with clustered message stores, a gateway, web access nodes with RPC/HTTP and ActiveSync to send mail to your mobile phone.

[fabyak]

Minecrack server!

[fabyak]

Or:
Set up a Linux machine with Nagios to keep an eye on all of your other machines in your network so it can tell you if one is getting full and so on

/just done this at work

[FatherJack]

Minecrack server!

You can easily run several Linux minecraft servers, even in the same VM on a fairly old machine, but a single windows one will struggle.

[buzzmong]

You should run other VM's inside your VM.

You can keep going deeper, it'll be a software inception

[Dog Pants]

Ooh, run a VM and then use it to remote into your normal machine!