[Koha] What's best - virtual machine or normal installation?

[Reed Wade]

2011/2/26 Marius Stoica <mariustoica at gmail.com>:
> Hi there,
>
> Here, at Arad County Library, we are preparing to implement Koha, but
> recently the people with whom we work suggested that installing a virtual
> machine with Koha is a choice we can take into account. I specify that for
> implementing Koha we have a Fujitsu Siemens Primergy TX200S4, with Quad Core
> Intel Xeon E5420, 2.5 Ghz, 6GB RAM, mainboard with RAID controller, 2x750 GB
> HDD, Gigabit Ethernet card and around 200.000 SQL records data base.
>
> Is there any serious threat or disadvantage on using a virtual machine?


The trade off is performance vs. convenience of management.

Virtual machines can perform surprisingly well but getting the
configuration correct can be hit and miss and normally requires some
combination of luck and expertise.

Using virtual machines allows you to set up experimental
configurations and complete, easy to restore, system backups and
similar things very easily--some great benefits. They don't protect
you in the event of a hardware failure though so they fall more in the
category of 'advanced convenience'.

You do have a machine that sounds like it would support virtualisation
nicely (multiple cores and lots of memory are the keys).

Unless you a specific need / interest my own inclination might be to
not fool with it in this case. It's just one more thing that might
cause trouble.

-reed






> Any ideas, suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!
>
> Warm regards?
> Marius S
>
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