Folks, what is your suggestion on OS/virtualization/backup setup?
Main goals:
1. Ease of backup and restore. Fastest recovery time.
2. Maximum performance
I develop in Windows/VisualStudio. OS of choice can be W7/8/10. Main problem is that it takes about 2-3 days to get system setup with all of the tools, SDKs, configs, etc. It's just PITA to reinstall whole thing. Tons of software, licenses.
Currently I work in Win8 inside VM. I run it on MacBook Pro inside VMWare fusion. Technically it is "easy" to move VM. And backup is just one file. But in reality I'm not backing it up that much - VM file is 180Gb! Takes forever on network and no way to do incremental? Time machine thinks whole file changed and it goes on forever. So, only periodic backups. It is nice to carry whole environment with me on laptop, but now the way I see it - I can use desktop. Laptop + virtualization = performance is not what I want.
So... I do have beefy workstation. With 32Ram and OC CPU (4.6 clock). It will run Perfect on bare metal, but main problem is system restore. So, I DO want to run it on metal. But at the same time I don't understand how to make downtime minimal.
VM: If system hardware failure I can take disk out, copy VM to laptop/other workstation and proceed working. But it will work slower. With VM I can setup replica functionality (if use Hyper-V), but can't use GPU/USB (right?)
On metal: If hardware failure - how do I resume my work? If disk OK, I still need operation hardware to use it with, can't just move somewhere as easy?
So, question is, how do I achieve those 2 points on top? I'm going to run it on Desktop but not sure which way to go. I really want max performance out of this system. For Visual studio I learned it needs to be as much CPU clock as possible (bad multi-threading performance) and nice SSD
Looking for suggestions on what software combo would you use? I kind of want to run on metal this time (last 5 years use VMs) but not sure how to protect myself from hardware failure..
Main goals:
1. Ease of backup and restore. Fastest recovery time.
2. Maximum performance
I develop in Windows/VisualStudio. OS of choice can be W7/8/10. Main problem is that it takes about 2-3 days to get system setup with all of the tools, SDKs, configs, etc. It's just PITA to reinstall whole thing. Tons of software, licenses.
Currently I work in Win8 inside VM. I run it on MacBook Pro inside VMWare fusion. Technically it is "easy" to move VM. And backup is just one file. But in reality I'm not backing it up that much - VM file is 180Gb! Takes forever on network and no way to do incremental? Time machine thinks whole file changed and it goes on forever. So, only periodic backups. It is nice to carry whole environment with me on laptop, but now the way I see it - I can use desktop. Laptop + virtualization = performance is not what I want.
So... I do have beefy workstation. With 32Ram and OC CPU (4.6 clock). It will run Perfect on bare metal, but main problem is system restore. So, I DO want to run it on metal. But at the same time I don't understand how to make downtime minimal.
VM: If system hardware failure I can take disk out, copy VM to laptop/other workstation and proceed working. But it will work slower. With VM I can setup replica functionality (if use Hyper-V), but can't use GPU/USB (right?)
On metal: If hardware failure - how do I resume my work? If disk OK, I still need operation hardware to use it with, can't just move somewhere as easy?
So, question is, how do I achieve those 2 points on top? I'm going to run it on Desktop but not sure which way to go. I really want max performance out of this system. For Visual studio I learned it needs to be as much CPU clock as possible (bad multi-threading performance) and nice SSD
Looking for suggestions on what software combo would you use? I kind of want to run on metal this time (last 5 years use VMs) but not sure how to protect myself from hardware failure..