VirtualBox Uses

[coffee]

Your project is an example of it not doing everything you need it to do, like being able to do a live backup.

Why would there be any problem in doing a live backup? I dont understand your reasoning. If I want to do a live backup then I just do it. It does not matter if its in a VM or not.

In the situation I am planning its important to have both. The normal backups and a backup of the Virtual Guest. The only difference is that the VG is backed up on the weekend.

I do not understand your question perhaps you can elaborate on that a bit more.

 

[trevm999]

Why would there be any problem in doing a live backup? I dont understand your reasoning. If I want to do a live backup then I just do it. It does not matter if its in a VM or not.

In the situation I am planning its important to have both. The normal backups and a backup of the Virtual Guest. The only difference is that the VG is backed up on the weekend.

I do not understand your question perhaps you can elaborate on that a bit more.

What I mean is the Host doing incremental backups (or full backups if you really wanted that instead of that just being a limitation of your export script plan) of the Guest VMs while they are running.

 

[coffee]

What I mean is the Host doing incremental backups (or full backups if you really wanted that instead of that just being a limitation of your export script plan) of the Guest VMs while they are running.

Ok, Thanks for explaining your statement.

I would just backup from within the VM to a shared directory and then backup that directory along with the normal daily backup.

The script right now just performs a backup to the raid and then to tape. I will be updating it to do the VM when I get time this weekend.

I suppose that if you shared out a directory from the host to use as your /users directory in the VM then you could do a live backup. But thats too much work to do as you can just backup to a shared folder on the host. Might be other issues with the timing of the mount as the guest starts anyways (in windows)

 

[Mike McCall]

So, I followed @Markverhyden instructions and fired-up Hyper-V. I used Disk Management for make a .vhd on another machine (Win10 Home), and sent it over to the Pro machine. I then attempted to greate a VM in VB as @mikeroq showed. This instantainiously crashed my machine with some sort of service exception error. Recovered fine after reboot, though it did raise my blood pressure a bit. I'm now making a .vhd using Disk2vhd instead of using Disk Manager to see if that makes a difference.

It's good to see how some of you are using your VM's in your own production environments. I've been using two machines in my office lately and intend to run it in a VM and eliminate the hardware. Will clear my desk a bit (it needs the help) too. As for backups, it seems like as I backup the host the VM's would be backed up as well. If VM's are properly shut down they continue from there like any other system, so why not just save everything after shut down? I can see a potential need for continuous backups within a VM for certain LOB instances, but it seems to me that opening such a network connection would compromise the inherent security of the VM.

In my hedonistic lust for OS's to make into VM's I ran across a copy of SUSE Professional 8.1, and SUSE Home 9.1. Neither would install as the current version of VB doesn't support Linux kernels of that vintage. No good reason to figure out how to get them running, but a fun thought.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I use it for testing and for building images that I can deploy to real hardware.

 

[G8racingfool]

VMs are fun. I've got a tiny little i3 box that I host probably 5-6 different VMs on (not simultaneously ofc) for different stuff. One of them is an apache web server I use for web development. One is a full Windows Server 2016 install for experimenting with, plus a couple of various Windows XP/7/10 and Linux installs for testing things out on. Oh, and I also had/have one for playing with pfsense.

 

[Mike McCall]

It turns out that Hyper-V demands exclusivity (surprise) and doesn't play well with other hypervisors. Had to remove it to get VB working again. It did look interesting in that it includes the ability to implement a virtual switch. However, I think VB is sufficient for now until I gain some proficiency with this. Still haven't figured out how to get my XP VM to connect to the internet. Everything else seems to make sense and is fairly straight forward.

Too bad Apple's licensing won't allow me to move my Mac to a VM and run it on my PC. I have an old Mac mini (2009) that really needs to be retired, but my wife uses iPhoto for her photography. I keep limping it along to stay out of trouble...so far.

 

[glennd]

Still haven't figured out how to get my XP VM to connect to the internet. Everything else seems to make sense and is fairly straight forward.

Make sure you install the Guest Additions. Set the network adapter to Bridged and select whichever is the active host network adapter.

 

[fencepost]

I'll probably be upgrading my better laptop to Win10 at this point, I left it on 7 for a long time but now I want to do some experimenting with Hyper-V. We mostly have folks on VMWare, but we're not doing anything fancy that really ties us to that and I'd kind of like to try Hyper-V for some. Among other things, that'd get me much better handling of host monitoring with N-Able on the host (unless I missed something about their VMWare monitoring/management capabilities).

 

[Mike McCall]

This is what I'm seeing. I can get to the internet so the connection is working, but am unable to activate.

 

[coffee]

View attachment 8203

This is what I'm seeing. I can get to the internet so the connection is working, but am unable to activate.

Mike, This looks like XP. Do they still activate for it?

 

[Markverhyden]

What version of XP? Hopefully at least SP2.

 

[Mike McCall]

Yeah, XP Pro SP2.

 

[Mike McCall]

Mike, This looks like XP. Do they still activate for it?

I thought of that...dunno.

 

[Markverhyden]

None OEM? DNS looks ok? I'd try the telephone method. I've had problems on VM's with that before but can't remember what I did.

 

[Mike McCall]

Sure enough, it's OEM. I don't think it's even getting out because while it had internet access to MSN, it also lost it. Event log showed a DHCPNACK error as well pointing to my Edgerouter ip. So, I don't know if it would activate or not because it doesn't seem to be getting out, or does briefly and then looses it. I've seen others comment about this regarding XP & VB. Haven't seen a consensus on the cause though.

 

[GTP]

Have you looked on the VirtualBox forums? It's probably already been covered.

 

[Mike McCall]

Have you looked on the VirtualBox forums? It's probably already been covered.

Yes. Most of their issues seem to come from not properly configuring the adapter for the machine. Not sure what the issue with mine is. All other VM's work just fine. I may have to make another XP VM and see if it works, or has the same issue.

 

[Markverhyden]

Sure enough, it's OEM. I don't think it's even getting out because while it had internet access to MSN, it also lost it. Event log showed a DHCPNACK error as well pointing to my Edgerouter ip. So, I don't know if it would activate or not because it doesn't seem to be getting out, or does briefly and then looses it. I've seen others comment about this regarding XP & VB. Haven't seen a consensus on the cause though.

Unless you have a SLIC key or one from a label on the OEM machine it will not work.

 

[glennd]

Yes. Most of their issues seem to come from not properly configuring the adapter for the machine. Not sure what the issue with mine is. All other VM's work just fine. I may have to make another XP VM and see if it works, or has the same issue.

See if you can dig up SP3 version.