Virtual PC and Evaluations

[ba55meister]

just get VMware Workstation, create a machine there, make a standard windows install for example and take a snapshot of this machine clean of any additional software installed. then you can try as many programs as you want and if you dont need them any more just go back to the clean snapshot you took before. xp machine will run perfectly with 512 dedicated to it so you dont really need a very powerful machine.
in my VMWare I run a domain controller with 2 xp machines powered on and that all on the laptop with 2gb or ram

[darmstadt]

Well I suppose you could but the host normally doesn't have a terminal as the ESX OS is a very dumbed down Linux. There is a CLI interface but I believe that is only in the paid for version but you can also access via a web interface.

[Shimano105]

Ok, so I get the server hosting side and the client access software. Is there any way of hosting the client access software minimally i.e. without Windows?

I want to have a variety of Windows VMs on the server so the client pc just needs to be a dumb terminal really with no access to anything other than the VMWare Server.

[darmstadt]

Would a Citrix-like environment be feasible where you have several VMs on the server, any of which you could log on to via a client?

So, as a Windows user, I would use Terminal Services to log on to a VM of my choice (which could be networked to any number of other VM Servers)?

This would mean the client could be a very minimal installation. Any downloads from t'internet would be invoked by the VM Server which would be hardwired to the router. This would be preferable to downloading directly to the client using a crappy wi-fi connection.

Sorry, stream of consciousness going on there.

With VMWare ESX you don't need Citrix or anything like that. It comes with a client which you download from the server and you can connect to any of the VMs running on the server.

[Shimano105]

Would a Citrix-like environment be feasible where you have several VMs on the server, any of which you could log on to via a client?

So, as a Windows user, I would use Terminal Services to log on to a VM of my choice (which could be networked to any number of other VM Servers)?

This would mean the client could be a very minimal installation. Any downloads from t'internet would be invoked by the VM Server which would be hardwired to the router. This would be preferable to downloading directly to the client using a crappy wi-fi connection.

Sorry, stream of consciousness going on there.

[darmstadt]

So, if your machine was powerful enough you could have a very minimal OS installation and a stack of virtual PCs.

Yep, thats why I mentioned VMWare ESX. This is a small (aroung 18mb IIRC) Linux based OS for running virtual systems only. You control it all through either a web interface, CLI or via a client installed on a workstation. A number of manufacturers now offer it pre-installed on their servers. There are others but this one is free...My last project I had 8 servers with 16gb of memory in each and I had set them up so that testers, devlopers, demo systems, etc all had their own virtual system with snapshots taken so they could always revert back to a point in time in case of problems. Very nice...

Mainframes have been doing this for over 30 years though with the VM operating system . For instance, part of my current project is 1 mainframe with 386gb of storage. It is divided into a number of logical partitions of which 3 are running z/VM; production, QA and test (the other partitions are z/OS and coupling facilities for Sysplex.) In the test partition there are currently around 220 zLinux (Debian and SuSE) images running and each one is running various applications (all are running Apache, zabbix, etc.) The 18 or so systems I'm currently setting up are all running various databases along with different flavours of WebSphere. In order for me to do that under Windows I would probably need over 250 servers, a big room and a few more staff than just old me...

[voodooflux]

So, if your machine was powerful enough you could have a very minimal OS installation and a stack of virtual PCs.

Yep, exactly. Current ClientCo have a monster machine that runs multiple VM's for our test environment.

[Shimano105]

So, if your machine was powerful enough you could have a very minimal OS installation and a stack of virtual PCs.

If you only ever use your computer via one of these then you can effectively rebuild a PC every so often just by copying a .vhd file. You could switch OS's and dev/server/entertainment environments at the drop of a hat and keep a virtual server farm all on one PC? Am I right?

This sounds interesting. I guess there is a performance hit but if the machine is powerful enough the pros would make it worthwhile...

[darmstadt]

My main machine runs VMWare Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Sun xVM (all free) with various flavours of Windows and Linux. As it has 6GB of memory then it allows me to allocate a fair bit to each VM so they at least run pretty well (running multiple WebSphere servers with Oracle, MySQL, DB2 and SQL Server.)

On my laptop running Debian with 2gb of memory I run Sun xVM with a WinXP and Win2000 guest. They both seem to run pretty well but unlike the big machine I haven't really loaded them with a lot of applications although the base Linux system is running a lot of applications already. It looks to me that running virtual machines in a Linux host is a lot faster and there is not so much memory consumption.

If you can, I would suggest getting a reasonably cheap server and installing VMWare ESX3i which is also free ('ish) and running your VM's there. I'm in the process of setting this up on an old x236.

[voodooflux]

Thanks Voodoo

Would 2G memory on a dual core laptop cut it or do I need to invest in a machine with loads more RAM and a massive drive?

I envisage I could get away with one 'client' and one 'server' on the host, but I don't want it to just chug away swapping files all day.

While probably technically possible with 2GB, get more RAM if you can. You'll need to allocate a certain amount of RAM to each VM, so I'd suggest looking at 4GB if your laptop supports it.

A dedicated machine with faster (and seperate) drives will be better suited to the purpose though.

[Shimano105]

Thanks Voodoo

Would 2G memory on a dual core laptop cut it or do I need to invest in a machine with loads more RAM and a massive drive?

I envisage I could get away with one 'client' and one 'server' on the host, but I don't want it to just chug away swapping files all day.

[voodooflux]

Can I just recreate the VHD when the product expires?

Depends on whether the product expires on a given date, or after a certain installation period.

Will Microsoft updates be applied whilst in evaluation mode?

I'll need to double check, but I'm pretty sure the updates still apply.

If I want e.g. a Sharepoint VPC, a SQL VPC and a Visual Studio VPC all running on one host, what sort of hardware would you recommend, bearing in mind that the server products would be using Windows 2003?

Plenty of RAM and a multi-core processor.

Does Virtual PC have to be purchased in order to create your own VHDs?

Both Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server are free.

Can the VHD be backed up so that when the evaluation software expires I can just copy the backed up VHD file over the one containing expired software and start all over again?

Again depends how the expiry is implemented within the software you are evaluating - date based, usage based, etc.

Cheers!

No probs.

[Shimano105]

So I would like to setup some virtual pcs to evaluate software:

- Can I just recreate the VHD when the product expires? Will Microsoft updates be applied whilst in evaluation mode?

- If I want e.g. a Sharepoint VPC, a SQL VPC and a Visual Studio VPC all running on one host, what sort of hardware would you recommend, bearing in mind that the server products would be using Windows 2003?

- Does Virtual PC have to be purchased in order to create your own VHDs?

- Can the VHD be backed up so that when the evaluation software expires I can just copy the backed up VHD file over the one containing expired software and start all over again?

Cheers!