My employer wants to run our version control system in a virtual machine. Is this a bad idea or does it not matter? I am concerned about disk access integrity and stability. Are these valid concerns? Are there other concerns I should have? Thanks
A:
Should be perfectly fine. In some ways, it's even easier for backup strategies, as you can have VM snapshots etc. Also, you can easily hook up decent NAS solutions as drives in your VM machine, so no need to worry about data integrity of your repository. It really all depends on the implementation.
As long as it is a proper server host, not a little desktop machine being used by the secretary that's running this VM. Well, you get the point.
Wim Hollebrandse
2009-11-16 18:29:53
A:
Disk integrity and stability are valid concerns, because the whole system is stored on a single file on an external disk. This means that the chances that you lose the whole system is dependent on the configuration of the external disk - you can lose the whole os if you lose that file. However, you would be extremely remiss to not have a system for backing up your vcs. If you use a distributed vcs, like Git or Mercurial, you get a "free" backup - every clone of the repository is a full backup, with history and all - but any other vcs, you should be doing some sort of archiving of your vcs anyway. This is the whole of your IP value, after all.
Matt
2009-11-16 18:32:15
+2
A:
We have our subversion server running on a ESX 3 VM but the repository is in a SAN to which the VM has access. Best of both worlds if you ask me.
Otávio Décio
2009-11-16 18:35:24