High-Performance & Portable Virtualized Environment

[yonilerner]

Hi everyone, I've got a question about "portable" virtualization. I'll describe my problem:

 

I have a pretty complicated (software) development environment that relies on several different things working together. I also need a fairly powerful computer to make all this work together; my current setup is the new Razer Blade Pro HD (i7 7700HQ, GTX 1060) on Ubuntu 16.04, upgraded to a larger SSD and 32GB of RAM - and it works pretty well for me. However, this setup is not ideal because the laptop is incredibly heavy, and since I use it with dual monitors, "plugging in" after dragging my laptop to the new location is frustrating.

 

What I would prefer to do is carry around an SSD that has my entire environment on it, and just plug that into either my desk or work computer; this gives me a portable development environment without requiring significant portable hardware. To be clear: this is a *massive* "first world problem" - I do not need this, but its something that I want, if doable. After reading a bit, and especially after that LTT video on virtualizing several gaming setups on a single computer, it appeared to me that a good solution for this would be installing a type-1 hypervisor on the different machines I want to plug my SSD into. However, I've never done this sort of thing before, and there seems to be very little practical advice about how someone would go about doing this.

 

Essentially, I'm looking for advice regarding how to set up this sort of thing; which hypervisor is ideal, what compatibility issues would I run into, what gotchas should I be aware of, and most importantly, is this even a good idea. I intend for the guest OS to be whatever the newest version of Ubuntu LTS is - 16.04 now ofc, but hopefully 18.04 in a few months.

 

The things I need, if I go down this road, are:

- Networking - This needs to work on a laptop, so Wifi card has to be supported. Ethernet, of course, needs to be supported

- Performance - I'm OK with a tiny performance cost, but if I'm going to be noticing something significant, probably isn't worth it

- Dual 1440p monitor support via HDMI, DisplayPort, or Thunderbolt 3 (any of the 2, as I need to plug in 2 monitors)

- Audio - I would prefer if the speakers (laptop)/headphone jack (both) work, but I will be OK with USB sound if that works

- USB3.1 - If the setup won't support that, then I won't be able to get a sufficiently fast connection to the SSD. I also need my peripherals to work (Keyboard, mouse, headset)

- "Plug n' Play" - I need to be able to disconnect the SSD from one computer and add it to another

- I don't need this, but it would be really awesome if the guest could be "paused", the SSD moved to a new machine, and then unpaused so that I don't even lose my current "session"

- (I may not be thinking of all the things I need, so don't be surprised if I missed something obvious)

 

Things I don't need:

- Gaming

- .. yea that's it

 

Thanks to everyone who reads this!

[NelizMastr]

The best way to realise this, is to have two identical systems at work and at home, otherwise, your only choice is to make a VM, put the files associated with it on the SSD and boot it up from a compatible hypervisor, this could be virtualbox, vmware player/workstation or hyper-v.

 

The main hit you'll notice is performance, especially graphically. There is no current way around this without having a central bare metal hypervisor that you can connect to from anywhere in the world that passes through all needed hardware (no portability), ESXi and UnRAID come to mind. 

[yonilerner]

@NelizMastr Thanks for replying! The gist of my post was that I understand I need a bare-metal hypervisor to pull this off, but I just don't know how to get started on it

[NelizMastr]

13 hours ago, yonilerner said:

@NelizMastr Thanks for replying! The gist of my post was that I understand I need a bare-metal hypervisor to pull this off, but I just don't know how to get started on it

The problem is that it won't and can't be as portable as just a SSD. The easiest way, imo, is to have a server setup at home, which is accessible over the internet (management ports and open ports for RDP/VNC) and work remotely.