Software Virtualization

July 25th, 2006 | by Craig |

It’s been a while since I’ve given a good old-fashioned Nerd Alert, so we’re way past due.

If you’re like me, and I hope you’re not, you have loads and loads and loads of software on your PC. Everytime you install something new, you worry that something old will break.

Or, you want to play the latest and greatest FPS, but you have 87 applications in the system tray and your system runs at a crawl.

Now you can use software virtualization and run your applications in “layers.” If you want to use an app, activate it’s layer, and it shows up. If you don’t want it around, just de-activate the layer, and it’s like you never installed it to begin with.

I’m just starting to scratch the surface of it, and it’s geared toward a corporate environment, but there’s also a lot of value for home use, and for web developers. Want to try out the latest beta of MS Office 12? Virtualize it, and you can run it without worrying about your current Office install. If you’re a web developer and want multiple versions of multiple browsers, this can do it without breaking your whole system.

You can download SVS here, along with a slew of apps already virtualized for your convenience.

  1. 5 Responses to “Software Virtualization”

  2. By dogette on Jul 25, 2006 | Reply

    FPS? Has someone been fragging? And all this time we thought he was “working.” :-)

    This SVS thingy sounds kinda cool. Maybe I could use it to reorganize my “Swirling-Mist” layer. I have System Restore bookmarked.

  3. By Gman on Jul 25, 2006 | Reply

    Greek.

  4. By Jim - PRS on Jul 25, 2006 | Reply

    I have been layering my FPS’s for some time now, virtually. It keeps my stindeens warm in the winter.

  5. By DMerriman on Jul 25, 2006 | Reply

    Hmm. Any thoughts on Xen? Why do just apps, when you can do much the same for whole operating systems?

  6. By Craig on Jul 25, 2006 | Reply

    I haven’t looked at Xen. I’ve used VMWare and ESX Server quite extensively, though.

    Hardware virtualization is great for load balancing, test scenarios and running multiple low-load machines on one piece of hardware, but ultimately is hardware bound.

    With software virtualization, you can pull apps in and out of your software load to improve performance, run multiple versions concurrently without worrying about DLL conflicts, and so forth.

    Both very useful, but ultimately, very different tools.

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