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Is it possible having virtual machines in the cloud, install visual studio there, and making developers using the 'cloud' to do day-to-day programming work? Is the cost going to be too high? Is the speed going to be too slow?
Where can I find statistics or numbers to convince people?
I like using remote virtual machines to run development servers, but I don't like using my IDE on a remote server. The latency is noticeable. If you're without an internet connection you can't work. My happy compromise is to have a dev server available (EC2) and sync it with my laptop via git.
It is completely possible to do this, using a service like Rackspace you can set up a fairly powerful windows server for as little as $60 a month:
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing
In my experience using Remote Desktop to log into a Rackspace Windows Cloud Server has been snappy and quick (of course a lot of that depends on the strength of your internet connection). The process of standing up the server is lighting fast, backing it up is even easier, and it can be easily resized down the line if you need more storage/bandwidth.
These days I don't understand why a small to mid sized organization would actually waste capital on server hardware.
Evan
I use Linux as primary OS. I need some suggestions regarding how should I set up my desktop and development. I do work on mostly .Net and Drupal, but some time on other lamp products and C/C++, Qt. I'm also interested in mobile (android..) and embedded development.
Currently I install everything on my main OS, even I use it a little. I use VMs a little (for lamp server).
Should I use separate VM for each kind of development (like one for .Net/Mono, another C++, one for mobile and one for db only, one for xyz things etc)
Keep primary development environment on main os and move others in VM.
main os should be messed up
keep things easy to organize (must)
performance should be optimal (optimal settings for best performance of components)
I'm interested to know how others' are doing.
There are both pros and cons with VM's.
Pros:
portability: you can move image to
different server
easy backup (but lengthy)
replication (new member joins team)
Cons
performance
hardware requirements
size of backups (20-40 GB per VM ...)
management of backed up images (what is the difference is not obvious)
keeping all images up to date
(patching / Windows updates)
For your scenario, I would create base VM with core OS and shared components (Web server, database), replicated it and installed specific tools into separate VM. If you combine tools within VM, you may end up with same mess as in case of using base OS - the advantage is that it is much easier to get rid of it ;-)
Optimal performance != using VMs
if you need to use VMs anyway, then yes: it could be better to use a separate VM for each thing that need one, unless you need more than one at once
Now that OCI containers are stable and well supported, using those through docker, podman or other similar tool is an increasingly popular option.
They are isolated, but under the same kernel, so:
they are almost as portable as virtual machines,
like virtual machines they can have their own virtual IP addresses, so they can run services not visible from the outside and without occupying port on the host, but
they don't reserve any extra space on disk or in memory like virtual machines and
they are not slowed by any virtualization layers and
mounting directories from the host is easy and does not require any special support.
The usual approach is to have the checkout in the developer's normal home directory and mount it into containers for building, testing and running.
Also building in containers is now supported by Remote Development extension for Visual Studio Code
I'd like to create a VM in Virtual PC 2007 for use as a development environment/sandbox for an existing ASP.NET application in Visual Studio 2005/SQL Server 2005 (and VSS for source control).
I'm thinking that I need to create a 'base' copy of the environment (with the os, Visual Studio, and Sql Server), and then copy that to a 'work' version that I do actual development in. I would be sharing this VM with one or two other developers who would be working on different parts of the app.
Is this a good idea? What is the best way to get my app/databases in and out of the VM and the changes I make into VSS? Is it just a copy from the host location to the VM share and back again? How do I keep everything synchronized?
Thanks!
I would seriously suggest you the following things:
Use a "server" solution, rather than a desktop solution. That's far more reasonable if you want to share the VM environment with other developers.
Use VMware's products rather than Microsoft's.
From these two points it follows that you should use VMware ESX Server and related products. If you don't want to / can't invest money in it there's a free version of this product: http://www.vmware.com/go/getesxi/, but I never used it.
Whether you choose to use the enterprise version of ESX server or the free version, I suggest you put your IT organization's IT department on it.
It's not a bad idea, if you think there's a need for it.
I do something similar when I need to develop a Windows App because it's just nice to have a clean environment. That way I don't accidentally add a reference to something that's not necessarily included in the .NET Framework. It forces me to install any 3rd party components as I'm developing and documenting. This way, I can anticipate prerequisites, and ensure that I have them documented before I load software to a user's PC and wonder why it doesn't work.
Just make sure the PC it's hosted on can handle the additional load. My main Dev PC is a dual core processor with 4GB RAM. I devote 2GB to any virtual PC I plan on using as a development environment so that I don't hit too much of a performance snag.
As for keeping everything synchronized, you will want to use some sort of source control (as you should even in a normal environment). (I like SVN with Tortoise SVN as my client of choice, but there are plenty of alternatives.) Just treat the virtual PCS as if they were normal PCs. Make sure they can access the network, so you can all access your source code repository.
You can use the snapshot feature (or whatever it is called) - that chagnes to the "system" are saved to a delta file so that you can easily revert to an earlier state of the virtual pc. It has some performance penalty. This way you don't have to keep base and work copies.
I use Virtual PCs for all of my Windows development. The company I work for has legacy products in FoxPro and current products in .NET so I have 2 environments set up:
1 - Windows XP with Foxpro and VSS - I can access VSS directly from this image and the code never enters other machines in my network (I work remotely)
2 - Windows 7 with VS2008 and all the associated bits and pieces needed to develop our .NET software (including TFS). This is the machine I use every day - I have a meaty desktop PC so I I am able to give the VPC 4GB RAM and runs as fast as a 'normal' PC.
I have my VPCs running in VirtualBox and it is equally as good as the other offerings. A previous answer mentioned VMWare ESX which is an excellent product for large scale deployment but if you want a server solution then VMWare Server is free and is a nice virtualisation platform.
If you are looking at ways to experiment with changes and still want to use VPC then undo disks are excellent - you fire up the machine, hack away to your hearts content and when you shut down you can choose to save or discard the entire session.
For me Virtual PCs are an excellent way to quickly set-up / tear down development environments and I would struggle to return to using a single machine for all my work.
I recently build myself a semi beef up PC (Q9450, 8GB DDR2 1066, 1TB HDD, Dual 8600GT, Vista Ultimate and Dual 22' Monitors) and I'm evaluating whether i should develop on a VPC/VMWare session on top of Vista or not?
One benefit I can see is that I can run the same VM on my Vista laptop so my development environment is the same on any of my machines. I also plan on purchasing a MBP before the end of the year as well.
Found a couple of articles online that semi-help Here
Any other thoughts would be really appreciated?
For webdevelopment I like to have the serverpart separeted out into a VM. My current setup is a Macbook Pro with several Debian VM's inside. I like the isolation aspect of it. I can try new software on the servers and have the ability to revert them back if something is messed up.
I do the programming via network-share (samba) in Textmate on the host system.
Another advantage of a VM is having a clean installed base. I use my desktop and laptop for lots of things aside from development. You never know when a piece of software you install is going to conflict, or if the little tweaks and what not you play around with are going to trash your OS. Reinstalling/configuring all your tools so they are exactly the way you want them can take quite some time. If you have a backup of your Development VM Image you can mess up your PC as much as you want but still be able to code without downtime. It also allows you to run Win/Visual Studio/Etc on a box that you would otherwise prefer Linux or MacOS on.
You can also make multiple copies of the same Image and use each one for a separate project.
Being able to transition between a laptop/desktop/server/remote connection, and always be in the same environment is also very helpful.
One problem I found (at least when using VMWare Server) is that no matter how fast your machine is, the screen refresh rate is still around ~30hz. That makes for a slightly unpleasant experience after using it for a while.
Where I'm working at now I use a VM for all of my development because I don't have admin rights to my base copy of XP.
Pros:
I like using a VM's because it give you some flexibility - you can switch between machines - have programs running on both and have a cool environment to work on.
Cons:
You have to boot up multiple operating systems. This takes time, memory and resources.
Clipboard operations on VM's can be interesting at times. Sometimes copying to clipboard does not work or gets mixed up between VM's. (Using VMWare).
File operations can be interesting when you plug in USB drives and other external devices. VM's sometimes do not see the devices, sometimes it does.
If your VM image become corrupt - you can easily loose everything in it.... unless it is backed up.....
It's great for presenting development talks, you can revert to a snapshot and give the talk from the exact same starting point each time.
Bulk-up your RAM on your future MacBookPro if VMWare will be used. I haven't (yet) and the performance with several other (mac-side) apps open really starts to feel sluggish.
All the best.
I was doing some work with Visual Studio recently with a Windows XP vm on Linux and somehow the guys who made the vm (vmware) made the windows machine actually run faster. We did some time tests to make sure and it wasn't major, but a few things (autocomplete for example) really did pop up faster.
If you are on Windows, Virtual PC is pretty decent for development work. VMWare Virtual Server is not really designed for use as a desktop and you will get very tired of it with any prolonged use. Sun's VirtualBox is another option competing with Virtual PC. VMWare has a workstation product but it is not free.
Typically, I do development on the real desktop (non-virtual) and then deploy or test to virtual machines which I can snapshot and roll back easily.
For a long time, we were developing on very early versions of Visual Studio 2005 and the associated .Net bits that went along with it. To protect our real machines from the various problems associated with pre-release software, we did all of our development work inside virtual machines. It worked amazingly well. I've been considering moving back to that model as it makes upgrading the physical hardware a snap (not to mention making it easier to deal with hardware failures by just replacing the entire machine): you just copy the VM image over.
On my current machine (A Core2Duo with 4GB of RAM), the performance drop when running one VM is almost not noticeable. Running two VMs, however, is painful.
I also can't figure out how to get VMWare Server to work across two monitors well.
I wouldnt want to develop in a VM so much as test things in a VM. For instance, it might be nice to set up a couple VM's to emulate an n-tier architecture, or a client-server setup or finally simply to test code on multiple OSs
It depends what you are developing and in what language.
VM's tend to take a fairly hard hit on disk access, so compiling may slow down significantly, especially for large C/C++ projects. Not sure if this would be such an issue with .NET/Java.
If you are doing anything that is graphics intensive (3D, video, etc) then I would steer clear of a VM too.
I don't know if it is so useful as a development platform unless you are doing something that ties into software you don't want to have installed on your regular working machine or that needs to work around a certain event that you need to be able to reset on a regular basis. It can also be handy when you are working with code that risks crashing your computer as it will at least only crash your VM.
It is brilliant for testing different configurations and setups- working with installers and so on, that is where virtualisation really shines as far as I am concerned, being able to roll things back whenever you need to and run through stuff repeatedy is amazingly useful for identifying problems before your end users run into them.
While doing development at home, I have to VPN into my company to be able to use the collaborative tools that are on the intranet. I also have a desktop + laptop that are hooked together through Synergy.
The problem that I have is that our VPN software wants things to be so secure that it will force all network routing through the VPN gateway -- even if I'm using additional NICs to network my desktop and laptop through a separate private network. The end result is that I can't use Synergy between my desktop and laptop and VPN into my company at the same time.
The solution suggested to me by a co-worker was to setup a VM instance on my desktop and use that for all my VPN needs. Works like a charm!
Speaking from personal experience developing java in an Ubuntu VM on Windows 7, I've found this to be quite productive. Mainly because my local IT support on the ground supports Windows 7, so I can do things like access all the local file shares and printers in Windows, and then config my Ubuntu VM to my heart's content.
Huge productivity benefits around remote access and desktop sharing. Windows allowed me to very quickly and easily use tools like logmein.com and join.me to access my machine from home and to desktop share the VM with other people in the company (both work seamlessly with the VM in a nearly full screen window). Neither of these services are supported on Linux, and I wouldn't want to deal with all the associated VNC/X setup and network config on Ubuntu.
My machine is fairly beefy. Quad core, with 16Gb RAM - 8Gb for the VM. Java dev in the VM is pretty quick.
Heres the problem. I use around three different machines for development. My partner is using two. We have to go through the same freaking set up procedure on all five machines to get to work.
Working with a php project here, so:
Install and configure, PDT, a php debugger, and some version of XAMPP.
Then possible install an svn client, and any other tools.
Again, to each of the five machines.
What if, instead, we did all of this once, in a virtual machine that is set up with the same stack, same versions, as the production server. Then each of us could grab a copy of the VM image, run that image on each of the five machines and do all of our development in that VM. Put Eclipse, apache, mysql, the works, all in that vm.
The only negative of this approach, and please correct me on the only part, is performance. Is it really that big of an issue though? The slowest machine out of the five is a Samsung NC10 powered by an Intel Atom 1.6 ghz processor.
Do you think this is possible and practically usable? Or am I crazy?
I use a VM for development (running on my laptop) and have never had performance problems. Another approach that you could take would be to image the drive in the state that you want. Use Acronis or Ghost to re-image each machine when you need to. Only takes about 5-10 minutes to restore an image on any modern PC.
I use a VM for all my "work" as it keeps it away from my "play". This set up allows me to use the office VPN without exposing my whole machine to the office environment (which I trust about as much as the internets. ;-) Also I don't have to worry about messing up my development environment by trying games or other software. My work VM is currently running inside VirtualBox but I have used VMWare in the past. I have only noticed performance issues when using graphic intensive programs like Webex or the Terminal Server Client.
It can certainly be done. What turns me off is the size of the VM image, which would normally be several GBs. Having it on a network share means it can take longer to transfer then your current setup process takes. I guess an external hard drive would be the easiest way to move it around.
Performance wouldn't be an issue with any web development.
I have to ask why your current machines need to be "re-imaged" each time you sit down for work?
If you're using Windows you'll probably want to use SYSPREP on the master image so that the 'mini-setup' runs when you boot up the virtual machines for the first time.
Otherwise in terms of Windows' point of view, the machines have the exact same SID, hostname and other things - running multiple machines with the same SID on the same network can cause tons of headaches. Even more if you want them to communicate with each other.
I've run websphere for zSeries on a vmware virtual machine with no problem and websphere is more resource intensive then any PHP stack. I find that having a multi core machine or at least hyper threading makes it run a lot faster.
With vmware, disk operations are slower. For PHP development I doubt it would be a problem, but you'd definitely notice it if you are compiling a large C++ project. There is also Sun's VirtualBox which is free, and the latest version is rather nice (but I haven't looked at how slow disk operations are yet).
I am using that idea in practice. Virtual machines are generally great for development.
To run on multiple operating systems and multiple separate development environments.
Preserver older development environments for later support.
Can be easily backed up, when hard drive crashes no need to start from beginning.
Can be copied from developer to another, so everyone don't have to do tedious installations and configurations.
Down sides are:
Virtual machines are slower, you need more powerful computers than you would need otherwise. I would recommend having at least 4 G of ram, but preferably more like 16, fast multi core processors and fast hard drives.
Copying Windows OS virtual machines, each used copy of virtual machine should have it's own product key. When you make a copy, it needs to be registered with new product key.
Did you think about a software configuration manager like ansible, chef or puppet? With such software automation of such tasks is very easy! It can even create fresh vm and then configure it.