The server that I have to dedicate to it is a very robust dual quad core, 16 GB RAM, 85 GB Raid1 OS drive & 350 GB raid-5 data drive system with a nice 200 GB internal tape drive thrown in and DRAC, too if I am not mistaken...was about 12 grand when Dell donated it to our organization almost two years ago... probably only worth about 3grand now... but its free, and free for me to use. There is no OS on it now, but I was thinking that it would also make a nice SUS box, or test domain upon which I can move and test out future virtualization projects
At the moment the most pressing system I need to virtualize is a dual video card (one really old PCI ATI/TV card and one AGP card. One of these two is failing and the PC itself only has 350 MB of RAM. Once the PC is virtualized, I can take it down and will not need to power up the original system ever again. I would like the person accountable for the accounting and graphics editing software (I know, what a combo) programs on the old system to be able to access a virtual copy of this system from his new computer which will take its place. So, let me get this straight. with the freeware VM offerings from most of these vendors I can host mutiple virtualized PC's (all old hardware will be removed from the network) and these systems, once virtualized can be accessed simultaneously and on multiple clients via multiple instances of the original workstation? Kind of like RDP, which offers multiple sessions, but is VM session are not linked to the currently logged in user??? Damn that would be the answer I am looking for... No cost for the P2V software? How is that possible? Ultimately any workstation I virtualize is licensed, probably Dell OEM's in most cases, along with all of the MS office installations on each. Now I understand the difference between client VM and server VM to the extent that I will not be running multiple server instances at this point. But two questions... 1. If I have 10 XP client licenses & 10 MS office licenses is there a way to offer 10 virtualized XP-Office "seats" out to other host PC's running either plain XP or Vista? 2. If I wanted to add a virtual exchange or wsus server into a test environment (separate domain) can I run those off the same server as the virtualized XP workstation I originally mentioned? If yes... is that also with the free server VM software? Really??? Aci ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
