Smoothwall Firewall project

Thursday 20 August 2009

Using a Jumpbox virtual machine as a mobile aide memoir

If like me you have trouble keeping track of all the technical information that comes across your desk on a weekly basis, then I might just have the answer for you.

I have started to use a virtual moinmoin wiki image from Jumpbox, the virtual machine supplier, which just happens to be free, to record all the detailed technical things I need to remember.

The beauty of this solution, is that as long as I have a Xen virtual server around, I can run up this virtual machine where ever I want and have full access to all my information. It also works with VMware, so you could just as easily use VMware server or player, in my case all this would all be done using Linux as the host.

The thing I like most about it is that it can remain accessible, long after all of the underlying technology has been replaced. You can also backup the data you have put in the wiki with ease, and that can be restored to another virtual machine running on a different form of virtualization, neat huh. Another nice feature of this is that it would be trivial to put this into the cloud for global access or even team sharing, it just gets better ;-). However, not all companies allow unfettered access to the cloud, so it's always a good idea to have access to both.

If you are prepared to pay Jumpbox a few pounds a year, which I would recommend, you can do exactly the same with Mediawiki, which offers more facilities.

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