Re: [SAGE] JAILS (Re: Respondents needed for article on sysadminsurvival)

[Thornton Prime <thornton@yoyoweb.com>]

Philip Brown wrote:
> you still have to essentially build out duplicate a "new" copy of the OS
> to run inside the virtual machine, one way or another.
> You only "save" on hardware setup.

With both UML and VMWare you can suspend an existing system and clone
it. You can then restart the cloned instances separately and reconfigure
them. There is no need to re-install the operating environment. In fact,
you can clone systems with suspended running applications to maintain
application state. You save a heck of a lot more than hardware setup. 
This can be a HUGE timesaver for platforms and applications that have 
really complex and/or boorish install and setup procedures.

I'm not sure about VMWare (I am just starting to play with VMWare ESX),
but with UML the instances can be COW, so you can use a single image
with as many COW files as you want.

thornton