ESX(i)will install on 32 bit/non VT-capable hardware. Hyper-V won't.
-sc From: John Cook [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:09 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Dying XP workstations - what are my virtualization options He'd have to check his specific build, I have a 2850 that DOES work with ESX 3.5, just not 64bit guests. John W. Cook Systems Administrator Partnership For Strong Families 315 SE 2nd Ave Gainesville, Fl 32601 Office (352) 393-2741 x320 Cell (352) 215-6944 Fax (352) 393-2746 MCSE, MCTS, MCP+I, A+, N+, VSP From: Jon Harris [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 9:00 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Dying XP workstations - what are my virtualization options Some of the VM packages like Hyper-V will not even install if the BIOS/chip set do not support virtualization. I don't know so am not commenting beyond that. I don't know what the physical requirements are for the VMware products. I knew about the requirements before we switched to Hyper-V here but the OP did not seem to be aware of that "little" requirement and no one else was mentioning it. Our Dell 2850 does not support virtualization is about 2 years old and is setup about the same as his machine. Our 2950 does support virtualization and I do not see any issues. Jon On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Steven M. Caesare <[email protected]> wrote: What limits (besides performance) are you seeing on CPU's that don't have the virtualization extensions? -sc From: Jon Harris [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 4:57 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Dying XP workstations - what are my virtualization options I will add one thing to what everyone else has said. VERIFY that the server hardware will support virtualization! I got bit by this when planning our move to virtualize all of our servers. One machine has the chip the other does not. From the pricing and age you are talking about my guess is you will not have the necessary chip. This will limit what you can and can't do with virtualization. Jon On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:58 PM, aci <[email protected]> wrote: > ... graphics editing software ... As someone else said, you probably won't get acceptable performance out of graphics editing software on anything but a real hardware display. Both VM and RDP lose practically all hardware acceleration. DirectX and OpenGL stuff often won't even start, or fails spectacularly. > accessed simultaneously and on multiple clients via multiple instances of the > original workstation? Not exactly. Virtual machines generally act just like physical machines (except when they don't). Think of it like removing the hard drive from an existing computer, and then installing that hard drive in a completely different model of computer. This model of computer just happens to be manufactured by VMware, rather than Dell. You get all the same problems with P2V that you have when you move a hard drive. Windows has drivers for old computer, not new computer. The P2V wizards generally fix that up for you automagically. Anything that cares about MAC address or machine configuration will be perturbed. That includes any kind of software activation that watches hardware. But just because you've visualized a machine doesn't mean it magically becomes multiple computers. You can clone VMs, just like you can clone (Ghost) hard drives. But put two computers cloned from the same disk on the same network, and they'll conflict. (Unless you SYSPREP or whatever. And you can SYSPREP a cloned VM, just like a cloned HD.) The keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) of the VM are managed by the VM software on the host. They're generally virtualized. For VMWare Workstation and Server, you get a window on your screen that corresponds to the virtual monitor display; your K&M are grabbed from the host when you click on it. ESX exports the KVM over the network (kind of like RDP). RDP itself also works with VMs, same as physical machines. Just the other day, my minion needed a Windows Server VM for testing something, but didn't have one ready. So I started the one I had on my PC (in VMware Workstation), then minimized the window. Minion RDP'ed into that server just like it was on our server rack. > Kind of like RDP, which offers multiple sessions ... I'm not sure what you mean here. You're talking Win XP here, right? Win XP will only let you RDP to the console session. You can't have multiple people using that same session at one time. (Well, unless you count Remote Assistance, or use a third-party product like VNC. But even then, you're sharing the same desktop; just with two mice and two keyboards.) A virtualized Windows terminal server (or Citrix or whatever) would allow multiple RDP session, just like a physical terminal server would. > ... but is VM session are not linked to the currently logged in user??? I'm sorry, I don't understand that at all. :) > No cost for the P2V software? How is that possible? "P2V software" refers to the software utility package that actually takes the physical machine and converts it into a virtual machine. Kind of like Ghost. You still need licenses for the software you end up running on the VM. Windows, MS Office, etc. > Ultimately any workstation I virtualize is licensed, probably Dell OEM's in most > cases along with all of the MS office installations on each. Microsoft's OEM licenses are *not* transferable to different hardware. They stay with the original machine. They die with the original machine, too. So if your Windows and Office licenses are OEM, you will need to buy new licenses (retail or volume) if you virtualize. Or violate the license agreement, but we all follow those to the letter, right? ;-) Also, be aware that volume Windows workstation licenses are upgrade only. You can't use them for a VM, as far as I know. You'll have to buy FPP (Full Packaged Product, i.e., "retail box"). > 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? By "XP client license" I assume you mean a license for an installation of Windows XP. Not a "Client Access License". You need an OS license for each installed instance of Windows. So if you've got virtualized Windows XP boxes, and you are exporting those VMs over the network to other computers also running Windows, you need a Windows OS license for both the VM and the "other computers". Two OS seats per user, in other words. For Office... I'm not sure. I think you only need a license for the instance installed in the VM, assuming we're talking XP or Vista in the VM (which can only have one user at a time). Terminal servers (Citrix, etc.) need a seat for each concurrent user, I *think*. > 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? Yup. With VMware Workstation (payware), at least, you can also create virtual LANs and connect different VMs to them. I've got a VM Team on my workstation that is a simulation of our production LAN, with a couple Windows VMs and a Linux VM. The Windows VMs connect only to the virtual LAN. The Linux VM has two virtual network interfaces, one connected to the virtual LAN, and the other connected to our real Linux gateway. This may also be possible with the free ESXi; I'm not sure. > If yes... is that also with the free server VM software? Really??? 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