{"id":342,"date":"2019-04-12T21:06:15","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T21:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bootstrap-it.com\/blog\/?p=342"},"modified":"2020-12-10T23:55:43","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T23:55:43","slug":"how-to-create-a-virtual-it-workspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bootstrap-it.com\/blog\/?p=342","title":{"rendered":"How to create a virtual IT workspace"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article, which also appears among my Medium articles<\/a>, is based on a chapter from my free online book, <\/em>Solving for Technology: how to quickly learn valuable new skills in a madly changing technology world<\/em><\/a>. There\u2019s lots more where that came from at my Bootstrap IT site, including links to my book, <\/em>Linux in Action<\/em><\/a>, and a hybrid course called <\/em>Linux in Motion<\/em><\/a> that\u2019s made up of more than two hours of video and around 40% of the text of Linux in Action.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever completely hosed your workstation or main laptop while testing out a new technology? Or do you have so many packages and their dependencies installed that you no longer have any idea what it is that makes your experiments succeed or fail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtualization can provide you with a clean, quick, lightweight environment where you can test to your heart\u2019s content. You\u2019re not even restricted to the operating system that\u2019s running on your host machine, so this is also a great way to see how things work on multiple platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re done\u200a\u2014\u200aor if everything collapses in glorious failure\u200a\u2014\u200ayou can simply kill off your environment and fire up a new one to replace it. No harm done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, I\u2019ll explore VirtualBox and Linux Containers (LXCs) as tools for providing easily replicated and sharable virtual operating system environments. I\u2019ll finish up with a few thoughts about writing code and building software stacks directly within virtual environments<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VirtualBox<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So say \u201chello\u201d to Oracle\u2019s free VirtualBox cross-platform hypervisor product and, in particular, to some advanced tricks for squeezing more value out of your (no-cost) investment. VirtualBox is something you can use on any operating system to create virtualized computers running just about any flavor of Windows or Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You do still have to get a license for any Windows image you decide to run, although you\u2019re generally free to install and use copies without activating the license for a month or so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve already read my Linux in Action<\/a> book and some of this material feels a bit familiar, it\u2019s because this chapter is a scaled down version of Linux in Action\u2019s chapter 2. The content has been made available through kind permission from Manning Publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting started with VirtualBox<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

VirtualBox provides an environment within which you can launch as many virtual computers as your physical system resources can handle. And, of course, it\u2019s a particularly useful tool for safely testing and learning new administration skills\u200a\u2014\u200awhich is our primary goal right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Installing VirtualBox<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to try all this out from a Windows PC? Head over to the VirtualBox website<\/a> and download the executable archive. Click the file you\u2019ve downloaded and then work through a few setup steps (the default values should all work). Finally, you\u2019ll be asked whether you\u2019re OK with a possible reset of your network interfaces and then whether you want to install VirtualBox. Of course you are and do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting VirtualBox happily installed on an Ubuntu Linux machine is even simpler. Just two commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo apt update\nsudo apt install virtualbox<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Defining a virtual machine<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not sure whether you\u2019ve ever put together a physical computer from components, but it can get involved. Defining a new virtual machine within VirtualBox works pretty much the same way. The only significant difference is that, rather than having to get down on your hands and knees with a flashlight clenched between your teeth to manually add RAM and a storage drive to your box, VirtualBox lets you define your VM\u2019s \u201chardware\u201d specs by clicking your mouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After clicking New in the VirtualBox interface, you will give the VM you\u2019re about to build a descriptive name and, as you can see in the figure, the software should be able to correctly populate the Type and Version fields automatically. The Type and Version you select here won\u2019t install an actual operating system, but are simply used to apply appropriate hardware emulation settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The Create Virtual Machine dialog: VirtualBox will try to guess your OS and OS version to offer intelligent default choices later<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
On the next screen you\u2019ll allocate RAM to your VM. Unless you\u2019re planning something particularly demanding\u200a\u2014\u200alike hosting a container swarm or running a busy web server\u200a\u2014\u200athe default amount (768 MB) should be fine. You can certainly give it more RAM if necessary, but don\u2019t forget to leave enough over for your host machine and any other VMs that might already live on it. So if your host only has 4 GB of physical RAM, you probably won\u2019t want to give half of that to your VM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keep these limits in mind if you eventually decide to run multiple VMs at a time\u200a\u2014\u200asomething that will be useful for testing more complex infrastructure projects. Even if each VM is only using the default amount of memory, two or three of them can start to eat away at RAM needed for normal host operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defining your virtual hard disk<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s a computer without a hard disk? The VirtualBox setup process will now ask you if you\u2019d like to create a new virtual disk for your VM or use one that already exists. There may be times when you want to share a single disk between two VMs but for this exercise I\u2019m guessing that you\u2019ll want to start from scratch. So select \u201cCreate a virtual hard disk now\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next screen lets you choose a hard disk file format for the disk you\u2019re about to create. Unless you\u2019re planning to eventually export the disk to use within some other virtualization environment, the default VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI) format will work fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve also never regretted going with the default \u201cDynamically allocated\u201d option to determine how the virtual drive will consume space on the host. By \u201cdynamic\u201d they mean that space on the host storage disk will be allocated to the VM only as-needed. Should the VM disk usage remain low, less host space will be allocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fixed sized disk, on the other hand, will be given its full maximum amount of space right away, regardless of how much it\u2019s actually using. The only advantage of \u201cFixed size\u201d is application performance, but since I generally only use VirtualBox VMs for testing and experiments, I\u2019m fine avoiding the trade off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When VirtualBox knows it\u2019s Linux you\u2019re after\u200a\u2014\u200aand because Linux makes such efficient use of storage space\u200a\u2014\u200aVirtualBox will probably offer you only 8 GB of total disk size on the next screen (shown below). Unless you\u2019ve got unusually big plans for the VM (like, say, you\u2019re going to be working with some serious database operations), that will probably be fine. On the other hand, if you had chosen Windows as your operating system, the default choice would have been 25 GB, and for good reason: Windows isn\u2019t shy about demanding lots of resources. That\u2019s a great illustration of one way Linux is so well suited to virtual environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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If necessary, your virtual disk can be as large as 2 TB\u200a\u2014\u200aor the maximum free space on the host device<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
You can also edit the name and location VirtualBox will use for your disk on this screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you\u2019re done, click Create and the new VM will appear in the list of VMs on the left side of the VirtualBox manager. Enjoy the taste of success, but you\u2019re not done: that was just the machine. Now you\u2019ll need an operating system to bring it to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Downloading an operating system<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Now that you\u2019ve defined your new VM\u2019s virtual hardware profile, here\u2019s what still needs doing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n