[OT] Virtualization (WAS: UNIX V7) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Jun 2009

Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at Update.UU.SE> wrote:

...
  (Sorry for keeping this OT discussion continue, but
one of my questions 
 are vaguely on topic) 
This will definitely go back to on-topic... :-)

...
   > These
people think it's efficient to run a copy of Windows 2003 on a
 > server (which needs a couple of gig of RAM to work well) and then run
 > multiple VMs on that containing copies of Windows 2003 or other
 > flavours of Windows. They think virtualisation is new and clever and
 > it doesn't occur to them that not only is this wasteful of resources,
 > but it's a nightmare to keep all those copies patched and current.
 >   
 I'm curious, what OS:es and software did virtualisation before 
 VMware/XEN/Virtualbox and the like ? 
The most famous would be OS/VM, I guess. IBM did that already in the 70s 
(or was it even the 60s?).

There are an OS for the PDP-8 (put on the net by me, on ftp.update years 
ago actually) called MULTOS-8, which creates a number of virtual PDP-8s. 
Each normally boots and runs OS/8.

...
  Also, why is it wasteful of resources? 
There is always overhead involved.

...
  And finaly, why would keeping virtual installations up
to date be any 
 harder than non-virtual? 
Harder to keep track of all the virtual machines you (might) have?

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol