Hey guys i am trying to learn more about virtualization i have used for a little while mostly with virtualbox to test out linux distro's and test software on say windows 7
I was considering setting up a VM with windows on it for it to act as a server so that way if my hardware died i could be up and running in a couple minutes by keeping regular backups of the Virtualbox image on another computer or hard drive
this sounds to me like it would work well for convenience however a couple issues i have thought of
In the instance for example my OS drive or motherboard etc.. did die and would need to use another machine to run the server whilst i fix this how would i have access to my files as they would be on a storage hard drive in the server i would need to remove that as well and install that in the second machine then boot up and boot up VM once the VM is up and running because it is on a different computer i would then have to remap things like IP address.
this seems like a fair amount of work for something that is suppose to make it quick and easy to keep a server running
Sure i could simply keep the files inside the VM image but if you have media for example that takes up a massive amount of room so you would need extra hard drives just for the VM image because it would be like 1TB plus (which would also be a nightmare for keeping backed up) not to mention not sure how safe it is to keep files inside a closed Image file if that gets corrupted it corrupts everything (maybe?)
these things are making me wonder if it is worth it or should i just stick to regular windows installation i could perhaps make a bare metal restore of a system image of windows onto a second hard drive this would help with my OS drive dying and also if i did have to switch machines i could just move the OS drive along with the storage drive seeing as i have to put one drive in not much effort to make it two drive at least then when bootup it is already pre-configured including IP