RE: Free Software - Create Virtual Home Automation Servers

["David Balharrie" <davidj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been looking at this recently as well Mark. My worry has long
been what happens when I have some sort of major hardware failure on my
primary server that is my domain  controller, email , dns, dhcp etc..
Moving things across to new hardware would be a nightmare with raid
controllers involved and new drivers. My plan is to now convert this
over to be a virtual machine.  I can then move this around to another
server in the event of a server failure or upgrade with minimum effort.
There will be a performance hit, but it's marginal from the testing I
have done.  I'm going to keep all file sharing from a physical server to
keep performance.  I'm also then looking to run Trixbox on the same
server as anther virtual system.



Btw I don't think this is a beta release from looking at the site. Looks
like it's been released and now made a free product.



Dave



From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Mark McCall
Sent: 30 January 2007 23:56
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Free Software - Create Virtual Home Automation Servers



This looks very interesting. I have an old Windows 2000 Server box
running
our house currently that I've been dreading replacing because of all the
complex applications setup on it over the years, and all the hours spent
working on their configuration and setup. But with the new free beta
release of "VMware Converter", it should be easy to turn any real
machine,
into a virtual one. Imagine having several virtual servers running on
one
real box. Imagine how easy it would be to get these "servers"
back up on
a
new box in the event of a hardware failure on the physical server...

This is the kind of setup being used extensively already in large
business
settings. But with these free tools from VMware, virtualisation in a
home
automation setup is looking increasingly attractive...

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/article1837.html

M.





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