if i make a virtual machine, is it possible for a virus to reach my main PC that is running the VM? Personally i dont see how a virus could go beyond the virtual hard drive but i dunno for sure.
Unfortunately there are variants that can avoid the virtual environment altogether, and jump on the host machine.
Well, you could minimize the risk. If your host server is running Linux, it's not invulnerable, but considering all viruses are aimed at Windows, and now Mac, you could minimize the risk, but it's not 100% proof.
yeah im on windows, i want to go to unix but i need to get used to it first, thats why im using it in a VM. its really hard to leave windows as your main OS when you have been using it since day 1. i should get there soon.
What else can you do with VM except for emulation of other OS than you have atm? I am using VM for playing old games only but I don't think that's what the developers had in mind for building this program right?
You can add an extra layer of security to your VM. Have you heard of Sandboxie? It basically runs everything within a 'sandbox', a bit like the way Chrome works. Running this, within your VM would kind of create an extra line of protection (although, I personally think that's overkill - Best/worse protection is the user...)
You can run servers. but its just an easy way to use 2 OS's. i use it mainly to learn Unix, i want to learn most of the commands and how to get around it. once i master it, i may move to it full time. Thanks, wasnt aware of this, ill look into this.
sandboxes are nice... if you don't intended to save anything... great feature when you download that pirated software and not sure if it has been tampered with....
having tried vmware and parallel desktop, personally i recommend using parallel desktop for windows and mac. its far more intuitive to use and setup. currently using parallel at the moment have had no problems whatsoever.
Late reply, but virtualization can be used for many things. For example, in terms of an enterprise datacenter (where you have application servers, databases, etc etc), deploying virtual machines with these specific components already pre-configured is much easier than reconfiguring a physical machine. They are fast to deploy, and easier to maintain. Another example is when you only have one machine, but when you develop, having virtual machines with different setups allow you to do more testing on different environments. Another example is when you're travelling, and you have, say, a tablet. You need lots of processing power for some reason, you can remote into a virtual machine with more power.
