I am attending the class Desktop Virtualization for Makers
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/9980
I am going to buy a new laptop or mac book and seeking advice on what is the best platform to host virtual environments.
Can you clarify how it will be used?
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Several of the programmer classes rely on a virtual environment i.e. python, R, ruby on rails…
I am attending the class Desktop Virtualization for Makers Thursday to learn about virtual environments.
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/9980
What should I buy to host several virtual environments? I am assuming the more RAM, CPU, and disk space the better.
Yup. I would not use macOS as a host. Other operating systems have much richer and better supported virtualization tools.
VMware Workstation for MAC BTW is AWESOME!!!
Always reliable with no driver issues.
That being said have you considered cloud computing? If you are using this for educational and not to run workloads etc. IMO it is best to rent computer time the cost is really low like pennies an hour.
AWS Amazon Web Service would likely be free if you remember to turn off the computers when you are done.
This would be great for while we are learning these environments and programming languages. Will it persist data between Saturdays, when I am most likely to work on this? Is there a way to set a timer to warn and shut down after a period on non-use to avoid unexpected expenses?
There are small cost “Negligible” to have disk space. So just save it to disk and shutdown the PC and you will only pay for the storage and not the compute time.
VirtualBox; it’s free, runs on almost any desktop OS and is easily the most popular.
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Just be sure to install guest additions. otherwise it will be really laggy.
MacOS Guest Additions is only necessary if you are running VM’s using 32 bit versions of MS Windows (NT/2000,2003/XP, etc) or 32 bit Solaris. Everything else should work as is, but I’d use the 64bit versions if possible.
While VirtualBox is the most popular; Keep in mind you many not get a choice as some teachers have a specific VM image they hand out and expect you to use. Hopefully they hand out instructions on running it as well.
You can also save some time here
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Thanks for all of your input. I look forward to tomorrow’s class Desktop Virtualization for Makers
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/9980
Been working with virtualization since its inception so one can say that just about any Intel based system that has VTx extensions on the CPU would work great for virtual machines. OS wise; Linux hands down (centos + selinux turned on) but mac or windows pro / server is do-able too.
Overall for local, Vagrant + Oracle Virtualbox. Then going to production use AWS or DigitalOcean. One can also go with OVH for a cheap unmonitored VM using 10+ yr old hardware as a backup site…
Of course one thing that’s way better than VMs is containers. That’s where docker toolbox comes in best.
oh and I know there’s a lot of people out there that would like to spark a vendor war so… before anyone says docker works in windows… or VMware just does no it doesn’t…
So that’s why Virtualbox exists, with vagrant its just as easy as:
vagrant init ubuntu
vagrant up
References
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this really depends on the application.
VMWare is just fine, and also what most enterprises continue to use in house. If you are learning it should be on your todo list. However, I would not bother paying for it to learn unless you really do a lot of USB debugging (the free player should be fine). Part of the reason is that Virtualbox, for practical purposes, requires a license from Oracle for commercial work and their licensing scheme is pretty terrible, so even for end user stations VMWare is not only the standard for in-house DCs still but also workstations.
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Just a point of clarity you guys need to specify desktop virtualization vs hypervisors; Because the #1 virtualization platform is legacy AWS, and legacy AWS (pre-EC2) runs on a customized Xen hypervisor. The #2 is AWS EC2 and that is a custom KVM hypervisor. Everything else other than vmWare ESXi is a rounding error.
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if you are looking for a primer on setting up a virtual network it sounds silly but i humbly reccommend watching a metasploit with metasploitable tutorial and working along side the exercises. it will show you very quickly how to get a vm ware network set up. from there it’s whatever you need to learn how to do with the test environment.
i spent half a semester in school playing in the engineering lab because their desktop computers LITEARLLY had like 40 gigabyes of ram each in their engineering lab and it was awesome. its overkill and really only applies to large scale dissertation botnet proof of concept work.
i would suggest most standard gaming desktops built from newegg midrange or lower would meet your needs just fine. unless you’re working on, say, enterprise level stuff and if that’s the case just make the enterprise pay for your test environment 
scratches neck that’s nice but like. you got any of those uh windows machine images for me ? (shifts eyes) you can just pm them.
a while back some nice kid in college linked me to all of them but i think i lost the backups forever ago.
Docker on Windows is about to get a WHOLE lot better…