Using a Virtual Machine to Make Myself Crash Proof

radderfire · 1 Oct 2014 at 13:23

Hi Guys

I am a web developer and use all the usually stuff, Dreamweaver, graphic design programmes, photo editing, Office, e-mail etc. Is there software good enough to create a virtual machine and run all of these stuff inside it, with the same (or pretty near the same) performance levels as if I was just using the OS normally. I want to make my work environment crash proof and easy to transfer to a new computer. If I could use a virtual machine, this would be ideal, because I could then just save everything in it and if necessary port my whole software setup to a new machine instantly.

If it is possible:
- What software should I use.

- What hardware do I need to make sure everything will run smoothly and I have enough space to save everything.

- Can I use a multi-monitor setup with a virtual machine too?

Thanks for any help, however brief.

radderfire · 1 Oct 2014 at 15:23

Trifid:

Can I get as good performance operating within a VM as without?

Can I use a multiple display setup along with operating in a VM?

How much hard drive space would I need to save a VM? Is it worth using multiple hard drives?

Thanks for all the replies so far.

radderfire · 1 Oct 2014 at 16:41

Thanks for your reply Stelly.

So, you're saying I can set up a virtual work environment, in which I could have my OS and all my Office and Web Design stuff, maybe even video editing, and it would all work to a high performance?

I want to do this so that the day my laptop gives up the ghost or I get some kind of software issue, I can just effortlessly recreate my environment, so you're saying that should be possible?

If I was buying a laptop to do this, what hardware features should I go for? How many drives and what size?

Does it get really complicated and am I going to have trouble configuring multiple displays?

If yes to the above, would I be better off just looking at a cloud type setup instead, where I do a lot of my work on cloud services? (Which would make it easy to keep going if my laptop developed a hardware fault as I could just swap to a new one?)

Many thanks

radderfire · 1 Oct 2014 at 22:01

Thanks for all the replies so far guys.