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Comment by ryanmahoski | Hacker News Reader

I can appreciate the advantage of having my server environment on a USB drive, particularly if I don't want to lug my laptop to a demo, or my laptop is AWOL, or the situation calls for using someone else's computer. That seems very useful, and I can see the value of Jumpbox for those reasons alone. I know that it's also a breeze to fire up for ad-hoc development environments.

But when the only technical challenge is internet connectivity, such as in this case, what is the advantage of Jumpbox over VMWare or Parallels?

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" .... what is the advantage of Jumpbox over VMWare or Parallels?"

Jumpbox runs on VMWare and Parallels. (And Xen and some other VM environments.)

Oh ok. I see it now. And the advantage then is that you begin with a full stack. Cool.

Yes. Plus, as someone else here pointed out, you can have a self-contained virtual "internet" to demo apps without needing an external connection.

I agree with your premise that too many demos are done over the wire. Using a virtual domain on a virtual server IMO shows respect for your audience. Even if connectivity is strong at the beginning of a demo, one rogue audience member on bittorrent can make the presenter look foolish. API and cross domain calls will still draw bandwidth, but at least the parts you can control will be fast.

the other advantages not listed here: -the JumpBox is portable across virtualization systems -the JumpBox can be brought up on EC2 if need be -you can use the backup/restore feature to create an archive of the delta of what changes you've made to the LAMP stack and just keep that. if you need a new copy, get a blank jumpbox and inject the backup into it and you're back where you were -we have a Rails stack as well as a LAMP stack which is even more of a time saver-> http://www.jumpbox.com/app/rubyonrails -the backup system integrates with your S3 acct so you have an offsite emergency copy while you're on the road

sean

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