Virtualisation
#Wow, you learn something new everyday. I’ve just found out about two variations on virtualisation. Linux Containers (LXC) and Vagrant.
Linux Containers (LXC) is known as OS-level virtualisation, meaning the kernel looks after the virtualisation, and there is no need for some extra management software along the lines of VMWare or Virtualbox. The guest OSes run as containers, similar to chroot jails, and all containers, including the main one you booted from, share the same kernel and resources as your main container. As such, LXC only supports linux-based guest OSes. You can’t (easily, anyway) run Windows under LXC. Homepage, Wikipedia.
Vagrant is a strange one. It sells itself as being a way to keep development environments consistent, and I can understand why – if you have a team of people all with a VM of the same OS, but end with different results because they have tinkered with the settings on the VM OS, Vagrant prevents this by keeping the core one in the cloud, and each time the machine is started up, it checks itself against the cloud version, updating itself if needed. That guarantees consistency. Homepage, Wikipedia.
I haven’t tried both of these tools in great detail yet, but here’s some related links for you to check out:
