Deploying ColdFusion on OS X using Parallels - Linux

Rob Wilkerson responed to my article on Deploying ColdFusion on OS X using Parallels - Disadvantages, reminding me that many of those disadvantages go away if you use Linux instead of Windows as your VM OS.

While entirely true, to my mind some of the key benefits to using Windows lie in having access to SQL Server and Internet Explorer. Especially since IE6 testing is mandatory for any web site.

The "other system" disadvantage still remains as well, since while Linux is "Unix-based" like the Mac, it's different enough to require special handling in management and configuration.

That said, if you have any clients that use Linux-based systems to deploy CF, you can also use Parallels to create Linux-based VMs for testing, and those too can be easily cloned in case, say, you want to test a new version of Apache, or want to try out Python or Ruby. Or you simply want to play with a LAMP stack.

My machine has a couple of Linux partitions as well, in addition to the aforementioned Window's systems.

This might also be a good time to mention that Parallels virtual disk partitions only use as much space as is actually allocated. So while a typical Windows installation "thinks" it's on a 30GB HD, it actually only uses 4-5GB of space. Linux is a bit less, 3-4GB, usually.

Cloned VM's can also be easily backed up and archived. Useful, say, if you want to save an old copy of a client's site and data before you start in on version two.

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Next: Deploying ColdFusion on WINDOWS using Parallels

Comments

[Rob Wilkerson]

Maybe that's the key difference. I use my VMs strictly as servers. I have a separate "client" VM running WinXP for browser testing (and other windows-centric stuff I need to do) and other VM servers specifically for databases (if needed).

In my dev world, a SQL Server need would be accomplished by running a Linux web server and a bare bones (such as it is) Windows server running SQL Server.

To indulge my own OCD, I like to completely separate my client and server systems. :-) If the os/web server/app server/db are compatible then I'll run a single server. If not, I'll run two servers.