[mythtv-users] OT: Virtualization

[Raymond Wagner]

On 7/4/2013 2:15 AM, ajp at cantabrian.co.nz wrote:
>> What would you be gaining from the virtulization?
>
> I have used ESXi boxes for years at work and home but don't have any
> homeruns but certainly that is where I want to do. It's easy to back-up
> completely. With Myth upgrades it should be great, simply backup the VM and
> try an upgrade and if it doesn't work try again quickly and easily. In a
> perfect world I would have my data on a nice fast RAID NAS box.
>
> Apart from using the cloud, which doesn't apply here, virtualization makes
> life so much easier.

No, it doesn't. Isolation makes life so much easier. Isolation means you 
can upgrade MythTV without affecting any other services running on the 
system. Isolation means you can easily snapshot your system, and revert 
it if there are any issues. Virtualization requires isolation, but 
isolation does not require virtualization.

Virtualization is used if you expect your system to be compromised, and 
you must sandbox it to reduce the risk to other services. Virtualization 
is used if you must simulate a certain environment for compatibility or 
development purposes. Virtualization is used for high availability and 
the ability to migrate instances from one piece of hardware to another, 
when it is not economical to redesign the application to provide those 
capabilities itself more efficiently. Virtualization is not used for 
ease of management, except for virtualization tools providing an easy 
way to achieve isolation.

> But yes I would be interested to know if there are any downsides.

Unnecessary overhead and hardware driver issues.