My working process these includes tossing around lots of virtual machines, so I’ve gathered a couple of tricks. Let’s talk about getting your back better (this post) and lightening your CapEx (next one).

 Getting rid of client-secure laptops

Remote access to client environment sometimes comes with a physical burden of a laptop that is “secured” to access VPNs. Carrying it around alongside your main machine can be quite frustrating (and bad for your back!).

You can try setting it up with 2 networks, leaving it in office and remotely connecting to it, but that causes all sort of maintenance issues. I still remember how one of my colleagues tried to find somebody in the  middle of the night office to wake up a machine that went to sleep.

There’s a simple solution — convert this laptop to a virtual machine. VMWare converter will create a virtual machine out of a physical one in an hour and it’s free to use. You’d need admin rights for the process, but I’m sure you’ll find some excuse to temporarily elevate permissions ) I’m dutifully carrying a couple of converted laptops VMs, ensuring very fast support response time.  And my back is fine, thank you.