BaerConsulting LLC Blog

Virtual Machines are great ways to test something before actually using a physical computer. Programs such as VMWare Workstation ($ – Windows and Linux), VirtualBox (Free – Windows, Mac, Linux), and Parallels ($ – Mac) have been used for years by administrators for running different operating systems under a pre-existing operating system. They function just like a normal program. You double-click on it and you can specify your desired hardware settings even down to the number of CPU cores that you’ll want (keep in mind that the hardware that you plug in should not exceed the hardware of the machine that you’re running the application on), and you can install an operating system within that application just as you would on a regular machine. We here and BaerConsulting love them because if we’re trying something new or untested, we can simply install and configure it within a virtual machine. If there’s a mistake, you can delete the virtual machine or the hard drive file just as you would any other file. Some companies even use these in a production environment. Say you were to have a dual quad core processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 2TB hard drive in a physical computer. You could run a Web Server under Mac OSX (if you can get Mac running in a virtual machine), a Monitoring Server under Windows 2003 Server, a Mail Server under CentOS, a NAS on the actual machine running whatever flavor of OS you prefer, and a PBX Server on Ubuntu, all running on that one physical machine. They would all run flawlessly because of the physical hardware specs you have on the physical machine. It’s a great way to learn Linux without having to clear your drive and dump Windows as well. Linux is free, so is VirtualBox, the only thing you’ll lose is some time and hard drive space.

Money, it’s what makes the world function these days. The old saying “you get what you pay for” doesn’t apply to every situation, but it’s typically true when it comes to computers. Sure, Ubuntu is free, which is great, but you will have many more obstacles when getting to a stable, reliable machine. Hardware is no exception. If you want a rocket ship, then build/buy one, but don’t buy cheap parts for it. Don’t sacrifice quality for money. If it will cost an additional $200 to get the name brand item, then splurge and buy the name brand item. Usually, you’ll get caught up in trying to save money, you sacrifice more on quality, which you will be paying for later. When buying/building a computer, just remember, “you get what you pay for”!