There comes a time when simply running a virtual machine is not enough.  Maybe you need to mount the VMs disk to grab or modify a file.  Maybe you want to move a VM to a different computer.  In this article I will explore methods to duplicate, import and modify existing VMs.

Often you need to expose a second network interface in your virtual machines.  Sometimes you have a second physical interface on the actual host, this is usually part of a private back end network (with a private IP space).  Other times, you are using virtualization on a single host for isolating individual components, here you can make a second (virtual) bridge with no physical backing network.

I've been messing around with building a HHVM extension using NewRelics AgentSDK that will allow for segmenting database and external calls. This is a brief summary of the things I've learned about overriding HHVM's core functionality to hook in NewRelic segments.

I decided it was time to tackle another front-end project. I planned it out, thought it through, and jumped right in! Only one problem: It, ummmm, wasn't doing what I wanted it to. What did I want it to do, exactly? You know, just a simple responsive two-column layout that has containers with a rounded border and 60% white background with text, 40% background with a vibrant color and an image.

You may find that immediately after installing your guest, you cannot connect to the guest via `virsh console`. Follow along as I add a serial console, designate it for use by grub, and add it to the guest's configuration file for virsh to use.

Time to create the Guest, or virtualized, machine.  Ubuntu gives us a very handy script that will take a lot of the guest install and configuration out of our hands... as long as you know all of the flags you need to setup a working install.

So you're new to virtualization and want to take your brand new computer, with its brand new OS, into KVM/libvirt nirvana with the least amount of frustration. Follow along as I start from a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty and configure it reasonably and easily into a dev/production web host.

SilverStripe is a (relatively) lean framework, but that doesn't mean it cannot benefit from HHVM's performance gains over Zend PHP. I also ran some tests on a hobbled down SilverStripe to see what kind of performance gains other, not so lean, frameworks might hope to achieve.

Magic Method __get() and Zend PHP (with Video)

The SilverStripe object hierarchy makes extensive use of PHP's __get() magic method. So much so that you probably cannot edit an article on HHVM right now. Unfortunately, currently this means you will need to edit and re-compile the HHVM source before it will get any better.

Just the Basics and Setup (with Video)

Getting SilverStripe working on HHVM is possible right now! Follow along as I show you how to work around the incompatibilities that need to be addressed before getting a single page to load.