RE: Free Software - Create Virtual Home Automation Servers

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Been using the existing virtualization products for quite a few years
now, and they're all very useful as you say.

Where it always falls down for me though, is the standardized virtual
environment each VM runs in, with no support for any non-standard
hardware, *EVEN* if the hardware is actually available in the host PC...

For example, it's never been possible to virtualise an MCE2005 PC
properly (IME) because the virtual environment only emulates a basic
graphics card. Even if you have a whiz-bang nVidia 7900GTX with 512MB of
GDDR3 RAM, DirectX10 support, yada-yada-yada in the host PC, the VM only
gets to see an emulated 5 year old ATI or S3 Trio card... Not MCE
capable, so impossible to run the MCE interface.

Similarly with other hardware... - try running a Geovision server as a
VM for example... - no way to make a Geovision card fitted in the host
PC available within a VM...


Has this changed recently?

Paul G.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of
> Mark McCall
> Sent: 31 January 2007 15:19
> To: UKHA_D Group
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Free Software - Create Virtual Home Automation
> Servers
>
> > I have been looking at this recently as well Mark.
>
> I'm surprised there hasn't been more response to my post here, I think
> this
> is really interesting stuff.  The story hasd been very popular on AH
too.
>
> > 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.
>
> Yep, that's what makes it so useful. I've taken an image of our server
in
> work this afternoon and have it running here on my desktop machine
now!
>
> M.