I wanted to share this demo done by @weynandkuijpers where he attempts to go from “zero” (nothing installed) to deploying a Virtual Machine (VM) on the ThreeFold Grid in under 10 minutes. Will he make it?! There’s only one way to find out:
For our technical audience, you’ll already be able to understand what is happening throughout the video and you already know what a VM is and why this is so cool. But for others, here is a little bit more context:
A VM is no different than any other physical computer. It has a CPU, memory, and disks to store your files. The difference is that while the parts that make up your computer (hardware) are physical, VMs are “virtual computers” within physical servers (in ThreeFold’s case, 3Nodes), existing only as code.
Via @scott:
At the time they were created, virtual machines were a major leap forward for computing. They introduce a software interface that takes the place of hardware interfaces and allows for multiple operating systems to run in parallel on a single physical computer. For regular users, this introduces the advantage of being able to run a Windows system on a Mac, for example, without having to reboot the machine. Virtualized servers, on the other hand, provide the ability to save and recall the state of an entire deployment, for purposes of scaling by creating new instances, backups, and also recovering quickly from faults and outages by replicating the affected VMs.
VMs are a major technology that enabled the invention of cloud computing. By offering well-isolated environments, multiple users can share the same physical server in a secure and flexible way. This can greatly reduce costs over renting or owning physical servers, when less than a full machine is needed, and also increase energy efficiency by filling capacity that might otherwise be sitting idle.
VMs are great for hobbyists, blockchain node runners, and others who don’t have knowledge of or want to learn complex container systems like Kubernetes (which is also supported by the TF Grid). Also, many software projects provide instructions to run/install their code which will work inside of a VM.
VMs on ThreeFold
The experience of deploying a VM on top of ThreeFold is quite similar to deploying a VM on a centralized architecture, particularly once getting through the initial account setup.
But in the centralized model, there is not much flexibility in terms of storage location, and moreover, you are left at the whim of the provider when it comes to privacy and security (read: you are not in control).
The control of VMs running on top of ThreeFold is protected by a user’s private keys, and such VMs can run on any 3Node(s) on the grid. This makes the decentralized cloud a reality, without compromising on privacy and security.
Ultimately, VMs are a beautiful launching point, now all possible with the many benefits of the ThreeFold Grid.
If you’d like to get started yourself, please visit this section of our manual.
Key resources