I have been using a Linux install for a couple years now and it has development checkouts (and matching databases + live data) for dozens of sites. Since I create a new virtual host for each site there hasn't been any problems piling more and more projects into this system. However, this computer won't last forever. [...] Should I setup a new VM + debian install for each project (seems like a lot of work). Should I just move everything to an external drive and point the MySQL data, MongoDB data, Nginx web folders to the attached drive? How do others handle this?

There's several suggestions made in the comments including things like:

• Using Ansible for configuration management
• Bundling the current linux install into one portable VM
• Using Vagrant for VM management
• Using source control that can be accessed from any device/VM

Have a VM management method you've found useful in your development? Share some about it here.

Now-a-days, you have frameworks that need to be setup [as a part of your environment], include paths that need to be changed, modules that need to be installed, web servers that need to be configured for your routing, etc. Then you might not just have MySQL, but Redis, Mongo, Couch, Memcached, Postgres, or any other dozen other servers. Then in Production you might have load balancers, multiple web servers, clusters of databases, and the list goes on. Simply put: web development environments are complex.

He introduces Vagrant and talks a bit about how it helped them with the setup and configuration of two new remote developers they had limited contact with. After some initial quirks, Vagrant made it simple for them to get up and running with new environments in a day.

PHP applications popularity is so high that developers which prefer using other languages are trying to compile PHP code in languages like JavaScript and Python using new virtual machine projects. [...] They also cover the latest PHP releases and the new features planned for PHP 5.5, as well the new PHP elephant plush toys that were produced by the PHPClasses site to give away to the best contributors of the site.

You can listen to this latest episode in a few different ways - either by downloading the mp3, subscribing to their feed or watching the video on their Youtube channel.

I was a little scared when it came to setting up Selenium, I figured it was going to be difficult to setup and configure. So I was pleasantly surprised when it really wasn't. So here are a few of the mistakes I made; since I use Vagrant to do all my development I actually grabbed Selenium and started from there. Not a good place to start, although as I found out later; not a total dead end.

He includes the initial setup of things like PHPUnit and the Selenium .jar file as well as a sample test that loads a page and checks the title of the page. His second post shows how to set it up in the VM (using Vagrant, xvfb to capture the output and Firefox to execute the tests).

Previously, I created a tutorial on installing a 32-bit Ubuntu VM with PHP 5.3.x. I've since moved on to PHP 5.4.x and Debian, which is universally considered a safer bet for a server OS. This tutorial is what I will point back to in the future when I want to show people how to create a VM, so you should consider the Ubuntu-based tutorial obsolete. In reality, Ubuntu is based on Debian, so the bulk of this tutorial will be very similar to the Ubuntu one, albeit with some minor changes here and there.

He starts with a few reasons to use a VM over the more traditional single development system mentality including keeping the "server" off your desktop and the dev-to-production similarity needs. He shows how to use the VirtualBox software and a Debian ISO to create the VM, complete with screenshots of each step of the way (for both host and guest OSes). He also helps you get a few things installed including sudo, setting up the network, configuring the hosts file and installing some common utilities as well as the MySQL, Apache, PHP and Samba combination (with PHP compiled from the 5.4.x source).

I'm currently working on a project that involves running Drupal on Amazon EC2. To save time in setting up future new VM instances, I decided to take the opportunity to learn puppet. For the time being, I'm using a single VM to run the full LAMP stack and running puppet without a server by copying my puppet manifest to the VM and using puppet's apply command to apply it locally. However, this manifest can easily be adapted for a multi-VM environment.

He includes the full configuration in the post that does a few things including setting up the correct PHP timezone, starting up the Apache instance, installing a few PHP modules (like PDO, MySQL and GD) and setting up the MySQL server. He also includes the commands needed to run the configuration and point it at the correct EC2 instance.