Your favourite Virtual Machine software

[SOHO-NZ]

I've been fiddling with several different VM solutions for a while (VM Ware & MS Virtual PC). I'd like to try and standardize on one and stay with it. What are your favourites or recommendations? - I'll be the host O/S will be either XP or Win 7 RC. Free would also be helpful...

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7073

 

[abe]

I don't use vmware but have used virtual box and virtual pc

I use vpc is better then vbox due to the following reasons,
1. the vhd can be on external harddrive, so I can use my os on any computer that has vpc installed. vbox didn't give me that choice
2. vpc supports lpt1 , vbox doesn't

3. vpc now supports usb in the new xp mode.

4. I can attach any vhd. in win 7 using disk management and browse it like an external drive.

5.I can make a vhd from any harddrive using diskmanagement.
(note: some of these things may be possible in virtual box, but I couldn't find them easily)
so for a good free vm its virtual pc. But I'd love to know what you and all the others think about vmware vs. vpc
Abe

 

[Emockler]

I like VMware. have been using it since 1.0 when I compared it to virtual pc (before M$ got it).

I have deployed many copies of VMware server, use Workstation regularly, also quite a few ESXi and ESX.

I have been working with Nxtop which uses Virtual pc VM's to serve vm's from a server to workstations running a bare metal hypervisor. Very cool, but has strict hardware requirements.

Sounds like VMware server is the free version of what you want, but there is a lot of value in workstation so I think you should consider it. dl a trial, you can always remove it as long as you convert your vm's to vm server compatible versions before the trial runs out, and then run them on vm server.

 

[purple_minion]

I don't use vmware but have used virtual box and virtual pc

I use vpc is better then vbox due to the following reasons,
1. the vhd can be on external harddrive, so I can use my os on any computer that has vpc installed. vbox didn't give me that choice
2. vpc supports lpt1 , vbox doesn't

3. vpc now supports usb in the new xp mode.

4. I can attach any vhd. in win 7 using disk management and browse it like an external drive.

5.I can make a vhd from any harddrive using diskmanagement.
(note: some of these things may be possible in virtual box, but I couldn't find them easily)
so for a good free vm its virtual pc. But I'd love to know what you and all the others think about vmware vs. vpc
Abe

You can use vbox to write direct to disk, I believe it's something like Write through mode, it's in the help file. It simply uses a partition and writes just like any other OS straight to the files. Also vbox does have USB support, but you have to add the device to tell it to use it. I find this useful as I don't want a test machine full of malware having access to any usb drive I have plugged in.

 

[abe]

You can use vbox to write direct to disk, I believe it's something like Write through mode, it's in the help file. It simply uses a partition and writes just like any other OS straight to the files. Also vbox does have USB support, but you have to add the device to tell it to use it. I find this useful as I don't want a test machine full of malware having access to any usb drive I have plugged in.

can you explain a little more about write through mode. And can you verify if i can store a complete VHD on an external drive in vbox.

i may go back to using vbox if its got any better.
ps.
Yeah i know vbox can supports usb, thats why I wrote that vpc supports that now, since it was a very important factor that was missing from vpc till now,

 

[LunchBox]

Same type of questions but different.

In the past some of you mentioned that you clone a PC and running the image in a virtual machine.

Unless I misunderstood what I read here are my questions
What software do you use to clone the HD
What extension (if any) do choose to make the image to run in a virtual PC.
Is the image really running in a virtual PC or is the image mounted and browsed in a virtual environment?

 

[abe]

i have 2 methods
1. image with acronis attach and convert to vhd using the builtin acronis converter.

This wizard will help you to convert an archive to a virtual machine hard disk. Acronis*True*Image*Echo*Server supports conversion of *.tib archive into the following virtual disk formats:
• VMWare virtual disk files (*.vmdk);
• VMware (ESX Server) (*.vmdk)
• Parallels virtual disk files (*.pvs);
• Microsoft virtual disk files (*.vhd).
• XenServer(*.vhd)

2. attach hd from clients machine using my usb/ide/sata adapter and convert to vhd using win 7 diskmanagement.

i then make a new virtual machine and direct it to the newley created vhd.

so to answer your questions
1. acronis for image (if needed)
2. its not extension its a conversion
3.the image is fully running on the vpc

Abe

 

[LunchBox]

i have 2 methods
1. image with acronis attach and convert to vhd using the builtin acronis converter.


2. attach hd from clients machine using my usb/ide/sata adapter and convert to vhd using win 7 diskmanagement.

i then make a new virtual machine and direct it to the newley created vhd.

so to answer your questions
1. acronis for image (if needed)
2. its not extension its a conversion
3.the image is fully running on the vpc

Abe

Nice, very nice . . . . . Thank you

Does it matter on that version of Acronis or will any of them allow me to do that?

Does the version you use allow for making images that will I can apply to any machine? (read this one from a different thread on imaging tools)

I will have to save this thread. I like it.

 

[abe]

the prices are a bit steep but the option to restore to any pc using acronis is called "universal restore"

check here
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/

 

[LunchBox]

the prices are a bit steep but the option to restore to any pc using acronis is called "universal restore"

check here
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/

Thanks Abe, I may have to invest in that tool. I've read many, many threads and acronis seems to be the tool of choice for many tech.

 

[purple_minion]

can you explain a little more about write through mode. And can you verify if i can store a complete VHD on an external drive in vbox.

i may go back to using vbox if its got any better.
ps.
Yeah i know vbox can supports usb, thats why I wrote that vpc supports that now, since it was a very important factor that was missing from vpc till now,

Taken from the User manual.

9.10 Using a raw host hard disk from a guest
Starting with version 1.4, as an alternative to using virtual disk images (as described in
detail in chapter 5, Virtual storage, page 75), VirtualBox can also present either entire
physical hard disks or selected partitions thereof as virtual disks to virtual machines.
With VirtualBox, this type of access is called “raw hard disk access”; it allows a guest
operating system to access its virtual hard disk without going through the host OS file
system. The actual performance difference for image files vs. raw disk varies greatly
depending on the overhead of the host file system, whether dynamically growing im-
ages are used and on host OS caching strategies. The caching indirectly also affects
other aspects such as failure behavior, i.e. whether the virtual disk contains all data
written before a host OS crash. Consult your host OS documentation for details on
this.

Also from page 77

VirtualBox supports two variants of disk image files:

• Normally, VirtualBox uses its own container format for guest hard disks – Virtual Disk Image (VDI) files. In particular, this format will be used when you create a new virtual machine with a new disk.

• VirtualBox also fully supports the popular and open VMDK container format that is used by many other virtualization products, in particular, by VMware.
2

2Initial support for VMDK was added with VirtualBox 1.4; since version 2.1, VirtualBox supports VMDK fully, meaning that you can create snapshots and use all the other advanced features described above for VDI images with VMDK also.

• Finally, VirtualBox also fully supports the VHD format used by Microsoft.

 

[abe]

sorry for making you crazy

so if i understand whats going on here is that vbox can present a hd or a patition on an hd to the guest OS as a virtual hd.

question 1: can i boot from that hd/partition or can i only browse it.
2: can that hd/partition be on external hd

let me explain what i'm getting to; in vpc I can have as many vhd files as i want on a flashdrive/ext.hd and just tell the vm to boot of, say the winme.vhd ot vista.vhd or xp.vhd.

if i undertand that first quote you quoted, it seems as if it can only present a drive or partition to the guest os as if its virtual, so as not to go through the host OS, but that doesnt tell me if i can have a collection of vhd's on my external hd and boot of them

Abe

 

[purple_minion]

sorry for making you crazy

so if i understand whats going on here is that vbox can present a hd or a patition on an hd to the guest OS as a virtual hd.

question 1: can i boot from that hd/partition or can i only browse it.
2: can that hd/partition be on external hd

let me explain what i'm getting to; in vpc I can have as many vhd files as i want on a flashdrive/ext.hd and just tell the vm to boot of, say the winme.vhd ot vista.vhd or xp.vhd.

if i undertand that first quote you quoted, it seems as if it can only present a drive or partition to the guest os as if its virtual, so as not to go through the host OS, but that doesnt tell me if i can have a collection of vhd's on my external hd and boot of them

Abe

Not sure I understand completely? Are you trying to boot the virtual machine from VBox AND as a normal "non-virtual" machine? If so I doubt it would work just like moving an OS from one machine to another, driver issues and activation and all that. I suppose if you really wanted to you could. I myself haven't tried a raw disk, but it sounds like it simply writes to the partition instead of a single image file with snapshots and such.

I myself simply create a 20gb fixed size file (or whatever size you want) and then run that. I like having my OS inside a single file, I store it on an external USB drive and always have it if I need to move to another machine or reformat, whatnot. You can also either create a shared folder and have access to the host machine files from within the guest machine, or you could simply attach another "drive" in the guest, only this time make it a raw partition. You could then store whatever data files you'd like access from in both the guest and host machine's without having to boot the guest machine and transfer them via shared folders.

As for a collection of VM's, I currently have an OS of every flavor stored on an external drive, I don't use raw disks/partitions, though I see no reason why you couldn't create a small partition for each machine on your external drive and see them like any other partition.

You could do a quick test by downloading vbox, read the manual and give it a try. I find it much much easier then doing a regular install. Once you are done with the install, go up to the menu bar with the VM running and say install guest additions and it will install display/mouse/keyboard/network drivers so that you get seamless mouse/keyboard integration simply by moving your mouse over the guest VM window, instead of having to click and get focus of the VM as normal. You can also resize the window and it will change the display resolution in the guest to match the window size so you don't have to scroll. Not sure if other VM software does this, but it's nice. They probably do.

 

[abe]

its ok i checked it out myself and i can boot from an external.

thanks