Virtual Machines - Moving to a New System Pt. 2
I've been robbed...
Shortly after my laptop was replaced, it was stolen. Not the best experience, but made easier by having client stuff in virtual machines and by having gone through the experience of replacing a laptop already once. See November 2009 blog.
The Good News
I was working only one client at the time of the theft. Fortunately, I keep client files in a virtual machine, locked under a separate password that would require a bit of know-how to get around. I'm not sure how it would be done.
The Better News
I keep back ups of the client virtual machine on a portable hard drive, and virtual machines move from machine to machines quite well. All I had to do was move the virtual machines to my back up system and I could continue working.
Note: It's tempting to run the machine off the portable hard drive, but that's noticeably slower. It also stops being a backup at that point.
The Bad News
Although the virtual machine ran, none of my back up systems were as powerful as the work horse that got stolen. I had to bump up the RAM to make them usable for client work. I really missed my work horse. If I had to do it again, I'd rent a better machine while I figured out what to do about a permanent replacement.
The Best News
The police recovered my laptop. Not trusting what could be on it, I wiped the drive and re-installed from the clean backup from the portable hard drive (see previous post). Re-installing all the software on the base system was a pain, but I could take my time with it because the virtual machines had the client specific tools already installed.
So I'm still a fan of virtual machines. Next steps? I'm told serious developers use VMware. And I'm thinking of giving Subversion another shot. So many things to try.
