VM Use Cases

[Spyderturbo007]

This is going to be the dumb VM question of the day.  I use VMs (Hyper-V) all the time for servers at client sites.  DCs, App Servers, etc.  They are easy to image, quick to re-deploy if something blows up and offer a lot of other benefits in a business environment.  However, I've never used them for client machines.  

 

But why use them in a home environment?  I'm struggling to find a use case for a VM with my home unRAID server?  I don't do PC gaming, but I am a media junkie.  I have multiple NUCs in my house for TV shows, Movies and Music if that means anything?

 

Is there a use case I'm missing?  I just upgraded my server hardware and thought they might be fun to play with, but I'm struggling to find a reason to use one?

 

Thanks!

[JonathanM]

I use them to have a purpose built desktop I can access from anywhere. It's like having the ultimate multi boot machine, you can have a MS VM for the few things where it's the only way to get something done, you can have a super lightweight linux with VPN and no social media or email accounts that you can drop into when you need to research something you would rather not have show up on your everyday footprint.

 

Pick a desktop task that doesn't involve super heavy graphics, and I'll build a VM that I can nomachine or otherwise remote into from anywhere in the world securely and be at MY computer.

[Michael_P]

Personally I run a Linux VM to host my WIFI AP controller, a Windows Home Server VM, that used to live on its own hardware, managing my Windows client backups and music streaming, a Windows 10 VM running Blue Iris for my security cameras and a clean Windows 10 VM that I use just for launching an RDP session into my desktop at work while I'm working remotely during the pandemic.

 

When I put the system together, I got the i7-8700 for the 6 cores 12 threads and 32Gb of RAM knowing that I was going to virtualize the WHS box, figuring that was way more than enough. Now I'm lusting after those Threadrippers and wishing I'd have sprung for the 64Gb of RAM (note this was when RAM prices were through the roof).

 

You'd be surprised how many uses you can find for a spare VM or two.