SERIOUS VIRTUAL MACHINES

IF YOU BEGIN TO RELY on virtual machines to a serious extent, enterprise-grade solutions are probably worth a look. The industry standard for virtualized servers is VMWare’s ESXi tech—available free in a package called vSphere Hypervisor—and Microsoft also offers up its Hyper-V Server 2016 without charge. Both solutions run a similar model: a complete hypervisor running at the OS level, and nothing else. In the terms we’ve used in this feature, they’re your host operating systems, but they do nothing more than host, giving their guests unprecedented access to system hardware, and giving you high-level access to the administrative tools you need to maintain a server full of temperamental yet critical systems. Typically, home users boot the likes of ESXi from a small local drive, such as a USB stick or an SD card, with VMs stored on mass storage devices elsewhere.

As you might expect, running server-class software generally requires running server-class hardware to match. Of course, you’re free to install vSphere Hypervisor on a USB stick and attempt to run it on hardware you may have on hand, and we’ve certainly heard tales of it working, though this isn’t incredibly likely, unfortunately. Luckily, the unstoppable march of progress means that businesses are constantly upgrading their equipment, meaning you can often grab suitable rack-mount hardware for a fraction of its original cost if you shop around on eBay. Naturally, your power bill will rise, they’re noisy and hot as all hell, and you’ll need somewhere to put it, but a dualCPU Xeon system, packed with RAM, could cost as little as $150 if you’re lucky enough to find one locally. Check the compatibility list at www.vmware.com/ resources/compatibility to see whether you’re likely to be able to easily fire up a set of VMs—and then check your wallet, because playing home sysadmin can be an expensive hobby.