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Currently I have a related task, a telescope is being operated using a set of old hardware (late 90s-early 00s) and same age software, due to current situation

by nuccy 6y ago

Currently I have a related task, a telescope is being operated using a set of old hardware (late 90s-early 00s) and same age software, due to current situation in case of lock-downs the observations are not performed, so the idea is to migrate everything into virtual machines with PCI forwarding, so that VNC/whatever other remote desktop software can allow remote operations. Does anyone have such an experience? What are the pitfalls? I plan use Xen or KVM.

FooHentai 6y ago
I did something similar for an organisation that had a strange music licensing setup for pub jukebox machines. A significant portion of their business hinged on this one ancient DOS pc with custom hardware and a licensing dongle. Ultimately it comes down to whether you can get the inputs and outputs you need replicated/attached to the virtual machine and and exact copy of the machine itself into virtual form - the latter challenge can include having to do risky stuff like physically removing the source HDD to plug it into various interface converters and then taking an image from it using an intermediate machine that can read it. Depending on how your setup works you may run into issues with things like time precision within a VM - if high time accuracy is important in the work it’s doing you’ll need to put attention into ensuring VM time = real world time.
bayindirh 6y ago
Some top of my head suggestions based on our experience: - Use Proxmox. Even free version can go a long way (because backing up VMs periodically is a good thing and Proxmox can do it fine). - If you're going to run Linux, run XFCE desktops with X2Go server. X2Go can work almost in any network condition. - Test PCI forwarding extremely well before taking the plunge. Especially if you're going to virtualize specially designed equipment. If it works, it's magic. If it doesn't then you're in big trouble. - If the PCI cards will be migrated from older equipment to newer one, test to see whether they work well with spread spectrum. If it doesn't make sure that the server you use allows disabling it.

by nuccy 6y ago

FooHentai 6y ago

I did something similar for an organisation that had a strange music licensing setup for pub jukebox machines. A significant portion of their business hinged on this one ancient DOS pc with custom hardware and a licensing dongle. Ultimately it comes down to whether you can get the inputs and outputs you need replicated/attached to the virtual machine and and exact copy of the machine itself into virtual form - the latter challenge can include having to do risky stuff like physically removing the source HDD to plug it into various interface converters and then taking an image from it using an intermediate machine that can read it. Depending on how your setup works you may run into issues with things like time precision within a VM - if high time accuracy is important in the work it’s doing you’ll need to put attention into ensuring VM time = real world time.

bayindirh 6y ago

Some top of my head suggestions based on our experience: - Use Proxmox. Even free version can go a long way (because backing up VMs periodically is a good thing and Proxmox can do it fine). - If you're going to run Linux, run XFCE desktops with X2Go server. X2Go can work almost in any network condition. - Test PCI forwarding extremely well before taking the plunge. Especially if you're going to virtualize specially designed equipment. If it works, it's magic. If it doesn't then you're in big trouble. - If the PCI cards will be migrated from older equipment to newer one, test to see whether they work well with spread spectrum. If it doesn't make sure that the server you use allows disabling it.