Linux Journal: Configuring a Virtual Server Instance for Quick Recovery

“So I’m sitting in my palatial 8″ x 8” cubicle having a nice cup
of Starbucks, when it happens. I hear the unmistakable sound of
rushed breathing behind me. Kind of like Darth Vadar, but without
the shiny black helmet. You know what flashes through your mind in
situations like this: someone has a last minute problem and expects
me to fix it for them.

“Before me stands a recently ordained project manager who
proceeds to babble on about how a business group needs a new
development/test environment ready to go in a day and a half–nice
planning, huh?. Already my mind is thinking about the late nights
and possibly a ruined weekend. You see, they want me to be around
to build and rebuild Windows servers as they test different
versions of code for a project in the final stages of development.
Should the programs or activities pooch a server, they need someone
to quickly rebuild and configure it for continued testing. Right,
no problem.

“Now, I’m a salary kind of guy. There’s no chance of gratuitous
overtime here, just a hearty, ‘You can take care of this for us
right? Good. Gotta go!’ So, what’s the solution? You guessed
it–Linux to the rescue. If you have read any of my previous
articles here on the Linux Journal web site describing the use and
configuration of Linux with VMware’s GSX server, you can probably
see where I’m going with this. By utilizing the VMware GSX server
product running on a Red Hat Linux server, I can host multiple
instances of pretty much any OS out there. To solve Mr. Last Minute
project manager’s issues, we can use virtual instances of Windows
2000 AS running on a Linux host server to handle all the testing
needs of the requesting business group…”

Complete
Story