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Do you have always running VMs on your workstation? If yes, what’s running on them? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by nithinbose@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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To clarify I am not asking about a dedicated machine running something like Proxmox or Esxi. My question is about VMs running on your daily use machine on something like VirtualBox, VM ware fusion, parallels etc

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[–] NikStalwart@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

So on my workstation / daily driver box:

  • I have Docker using the WSL2 backend. I use this instance of docker to test deployments of software before I push it to my remote servers, to perform local development tasks, and to host some services that I only ever use when my PC is on (so services that require trust and don't require 24x7 uptime).
  • I have about 8 distros of linux in WSL2.
  • The main distro is Ubuntu 22.04 for legacy reasons. I use this to host an nginx server on my machine (use it as a reverse proxy to my docker services running on my machine) and to run a bunch of linux apps, including GUI ones, without rebooting into my Arch install.
  • I have two instances of Archlinux. One is 'clean' and is only used to mount my physical arch disk if I want to do something quick without rebooting into Arch, and the other one I actively tinker with.
  • Other distros are just there for me to play with
  • I use HyperV (since it is required for WSL) to orchestrate Windows virtual machines. Yes, I do use Windows VMs on Windows host. Why? Software testing, running dodgy software in an isolated environment, running ~~spyware~~ I mean Facebook, and similar.
  • Prior to HyperV, I used to use Virtualbox. I switched to hyperv when I started using WSL. For a time, hyperv was incompatible with any other hypervosor on the same host so I dropped virtualbox. That seems to have been fixed now, and I reinstalled virtualbox to orchestrate Oracle Cloud VMs as well.
[–] nithinbose@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I am really curious to know what services you are running.

I don't use Windows so unfamiliar with Hyper-V do you pass through your physical arch disk into the VM? Are you able to boot arch from the disk or do you use it to just access the files on the disk?

Thanks for your reply.

[–] NikStalwart@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So to answer your last question first: I run dual boot Arch+Windows, and I can mount the physical Arch disk inside a WSL VM and then chroot into it to run or fix some things when I CBA to reboot properly. I haven't tried booting a WSL instance off of the physical arch disk but I don't imagine it would work. Firstly, WSL uses a modified linux kernel (which won't be accessible without tinkering with the physical install). Secondly, the physical install is obviously configured for physical ACPI and Network use which will break if I boot into it from WSL. After all, WSL is not a proper VM.

To answer the first question as to services: notes, kanban boards, network monitoring tools (connected to a VPN / management LAN), databases, more databases, even MOAR databases, database managers, web scrapers, etc.

The very first thing I used WSL for (a long time ago) was to run ffmpeg. I just could not be bothered building it for Windows myself.

[–] nithinbose@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah that was my thought too booting from the physical disk usually doesn't work. Just had to ask in case, WSL had something up its sleeve to magically do this, I guess not.

Seems like you are a database guy, are they all always running?

Thank you for your reply.