In the World

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a technology freak.

I love programming. I love gadgets. I love discussing what technology means, what it holds for the future, and most importantly, awesomely cool things I can do with technology at work.

Sometime last year I started playing with a little program called VirtualBox, which allows you to run multiple operating systems within a single environment on your computer. I saw it as a great way to maximize the computer infrastructure of Destiny Image, and to have some fun in the process.

I seem to have inspired Tyler, as he jumped into playing with VirtualBox with both feet. CORRECTION: Tyler introduced me to VirtualBox, and since then we’ve both been playing with it pretty heavily. I used it to simply solve some annoying logistical problems, like easily running Windows on my MacBook, or running a tested for operating systems without needing another computer to muck about with. I also played around with trying to move existing operating system installs into a virtualized environment, but without much luck. Tyler thought this was an excellent idea, and like me, was interested in the possibility of taking some of our older, rarely-used (but important and highly-specialized) application servers and reducing their processor footprint.

This past week, while I was in Canada (which is something I might write about in the near future), Tyler really got into virtualization through the new VMware ESXi Hypervisor package from VMware. It is awesome.

In less than a week, and without any training whatsoever, Tyler managed to create fully virtual, runnable, active instances of several of the mission-critical application servers at Destiny Image. I even used one of them today (along with most of Destiny Image), and there was no performance reduction.

There is still a bit more testing to be done, but the application potential of this is nearly unlimited. And WAY fun.

Anyone have an extra 64-bit Opteron or Xeon box sitting around? Preferably a laptop with this kind of processor horsepower? I could really use a machine to play with.