VMWare from Wikipedia

The Wikipedia link for VMWare is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware

VMWare is a publicly-listed developer of proprietary virtualization software products for x86 computers.

Products

Desktop software

• VMware Workstation - allows a user to run multiple instances of x86 on one PC.
• VMware Fusion - similar to Workstation for MacIntel platform.
• VMware Player - can run but not create virtual machines.

Server software

• VMWare ESX Server
• VMWare Server (GSX Server)

Other products

• Converter - builds VM from either physical machines or VM made by other virtualization products

host machine - the physical hardware

guest machine - the VM

virtual applience - a VM (VPC)

Introduction to Virtualization

The following I am getting from the Xen site.

http://www.citrixxenserver.com/overview/Pages/intro.aspx

Virtualization: The characteristics of a computer resource are abstracted so that is can be accessed is some way that is different from its physical form. An example is virtual memory.

System Virtualization: The resources of a single computer are present as collection of single computers. This was first done in the 1960s.

Virtual Machine: A computer that is a member of a collection of single computers on a virtualized system. It has its own virtual CPU,

MS VPC 101

It has been a couple of months that I have been working with VPCs but I need to record more of what I have been learning.

The current version of Microsoft Virtual PC I am running is 6.0.156.0. The is the 2007 version of MS VPC and be down loaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

From the Widipedia we learn that the original software was done by Connectix which sold the Virtual PC and Virtual PC product to MS. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Virtual_PC.

Here is an Wikipedia article comparing the different VPCs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines

A MSVPC consist of a setting file *.VMC and a hard drive image *.VHD.