Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

I was hoping to move away from using VPC; however, some of the engineers at work feel that VMware is much slower than VPC so it looks like I am going to have to support both. This could double the work in this area.

When I got my portable I got the Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. I didn't realize that I needed to have at least Windows Vista Enterprise. To upgrade is the Enterprise will cost $200. I think this is robbery.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=28C97D22-6EB8-4A09-A7F7-F6C7A1F000B5&displaylang=en

There is a OIT version of Vista Enterprise that I can get for free, but it requires KMS. If I use this and cannot connect to Tech the darn thing shuts down.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/09/create-and-setup-your-own-windows-vista-kms-server-for-local-self-activation/

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx

The connect and refresh has to happen every six months.

Multiple Activation Key (MAK)

Key Management Service (KMS)

Why on earth does MS sell a crippled OS and than make the upgrade path just like buying the original? Is that ethical?

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.

Microsoft Virtual Machine (day 1)

OK, I have been using Microsoft Virtual PCs for a month now. However, I have ran into some problems that I did not expect. One was the virtual drives only increase in size until you reach the size specified. OK, so I should have expect that but I was hoping that I could just continue to increase them until beyond the small 16 GB they recommend.

I need to study about the Microsoft Virtual PC so I know how to use them better.

I think I will start with the Widipedia description of the MS VPC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_PC

Qemu XP Under Windows 2000

I installed XP using Qemu on my Windows 2000 machine.

I had trouble getting the function keys to work. I had to switch from my USB keyboard to a PS/2 connector to get it to work.

I was able to get XP installed under Qemu. However, I could not get it to run.

It was a long a painful process which I don't want to do again, but probably will :-(

Virtual Machine Monitor (Hypervisor)

A hypervisor (virtual machine monitor) is a virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time.

The Wikipedia has a good description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

Some examples are:

QEMU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU
The windows version is in the alpha stage: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/
There is a windows front end: http://www.davereyn.co.uk/software.htm

VMware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware

Microsfot Virtual Server: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Virtual_Server
This package looks like it is limit to work on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.