Virtualisation

While I have known about virtualisation products for a while, it required a day home sick to get me to actually have a look into one. I had done some preliminary looking at Xen, and as a result decided to look into VMWare Server. Xen's idea of ported OSes was a little bit too much for me, although I suspect if you were after high performance it might be your ticket. I was looking for an easy way to pursue my hobby of investigating operating systems. I don't do anything useful with them of course, but I find it interesting to see where things are at. As an active Linux (Fedora Core) user, I like to look at similar alternatives.

So as a result I downloaded and installed the server, which even on Linux was simple (there was an rpm). I very quickly set up a virtual machine and was ready to install my first OS. Solaris 10 was my first victim, and given that I have tried to install 8 in the past without success on a real machine, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was.

Virtualisation appeals to my computer engineering background, because essentially it is a piece of software that acts exactly like a real physical PC. It would probably be quite fun to work on.