[CentOS] virtualization on the desktop a myth, or a reality?

Thu Mar 3 21:44:48 UTC 2011
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On Thursday, March 03, 2011 04:24:14 pm Dr. Ed Morbius wrote:
> I think I addressed that reality.  

Part of it, yes.

> For some needs, you need to be on
> bare metal, though whether this is accomplished via multi-booting or
> multiple systems (if you're doing professional music editing, presumably
> you can justify a dedicated system to that task).

It's not the computer portion of a separate dedicated system that would be expensive; it's the audio interfaces, patching, and control surfaces.  Much much much easier to dual-boot in a workflow-friendly fashion.  It would be decidedly nice to have virtualization running well enough to handle all the needs; but it requires twice the capacity machine to do it. 

> What surprises me is that there aren't more systems available which
> provide separate bare-metal computing environments within a single
> enclosure, perhaps with some form of shared storage, perhaps just
> integrated networking, to provide this sort of need.  We see this in
> server space (blade and multi-system enclosures) but rarely if ever in
> consumer space.

I've thought a bit about options; a ClearCube-type setup might work, and used units aren't expensive.  Don't know if blades are available with the expansion options needed, though.  Need a PCI slot at minimum.