Virtualisation: To be or not to be

New Job, yes.... you read right, new job. With, a spiffy title..... Systems Administrator. Yes, I have been able to revel in that title for 3 weeks now without actually doing any administering of this particular system.... I have however, read alot...of manuals.

...I'm actually quite bored now.

So, I ponder some topics while I'm sitting at my desk, eating plates of fruit and drinking cups of water and green tea with roasted rice alternatively...and read system logs looking for SQL transactions which run for a long time.

My new company, allow, nay even encourage you to work from home.... they provide you will detailed instructions on how to create a VPN on your home network. They tout virtualisation, this new buzz word and are in the process of replacing all machines with Thin Clients or Terminal Servers.... Terminal servers are a sys admins dream, because you can slap on a restrictive security policy and suddenly no one is installing silly cursor programs on their machines cutting down the amount of time you spent rebuilding machines becaue of virus's spread by said silly cursor programs. Terminal Servers also allow you to work from home, after all who hasnt got Remote Desktop connection on their Vista or XP machine.

.....well, that would be me.

I own a macbook, and whilst its the bomb, its not catered for in the overly length connection instructions for the VPN...in fact, its so advanced that it has an extra security facility which the IT department havent catered for. IPSec. Anyway, thats another story.

My current dilemma is about after I eventually get the VPN to work and have to connect to *Shudder* an SQL 2005 Server. Getting my hands on a copy of SQL Server 2005 wasnt hard, as it happens, I won a full copy as a door prize the month it came out in Australia, when i went to a coders meeting in Newcastle. I dont think i've even looked at it since. In fact, the whole Mac thing is still not a burning issue, despite that it says on the box of my SQL Server version, Requires a Windows machine.

No, my dilemma is should I use parrallels to make a virtual machine on my Mac or should i use the free version of Boot Camp that comes with OS 10.5 and install a full version, effectively break my macbook into two machines, a Mac and a PC. So far I want to give Parrallels a shot, but will SQL Server install on it? Will I be able to create a less secure VPN from my Virtual Machine..... Its a free trial of Parrallels.... why the hell not.?

...to be continued