Windows 7: BareBone Windows 7

Hi,

I am not jet very expirenced with VM's. But is folowing concept possible??
I have diffrent Laptops and Computers and i want to use the same Windows 7 virtual machine (VHD or any other hhd format) on all computers without having a guest system.

My idea is that i dont want to install each computer complete again.
Maybe a kind of xenserver but than able to boot the os local on it, instead of remote connection to it.



In this case i am not dependend on the hardware of the computer and i dont need all the drivers

Greets J

Hi there
there ARE products available such as Microsoft's Hyper V and vmware ESX -- but these type of solutions need special hardware and are usually expensive corporate / data server farm type products.

They consist of a minmal kernel so most of the host machine's resources can be allocated to Virtual machines but need a bit of experience in setting up and operating.

Typical hardware you buy "Retail" isn't really suitable for these type of operations.

VHD's (or virtual images) can be "cloned" etc -- you can deploy for example an identical vm Windows 7 image on literally 100's of machines - but be careful --you might run into licensning problems here since as far as Windows is concerned it's running on IDENTICAL hardware and won't need re-activation each time.

Cheers
jimbo

From reading his post, i have the impression that by meaning of "Barebone" he meant a solution such as a thin client for his machines. Thin client solution allows you for loading of OS over the network (a connection to share). No OS is physically stored on the machine/thin client making the machine effectively a virtual machine, only thing is it's not if you know what i mean?

I do... but the ram is going to be a show stopper...Windows will use 500mb right off the bat and with 500mb left, he would have a hard time running anything else...

Hi there,

Thanks for the replys, i am not direct looking for thin clients, we already have some laptops and desktop computers. I was able to install a xenserver onto the laptop, they all support the VT technology needed to run windows virtual machines. but the problem is that i need an other computer to loginto the xen server and connect to the VM to work in it.

I just want to seperate the hardware and software with a virtual layer in between, but stil be able to run the windows on the same machine. So when i start up the laptop for example, and there is just one VM active on the vm Layer it automatic boots this VM.

You need to install a VM client (VM Infrastructure Client) on each machine that will connect to your ESX Server.

I think it's best that you do a bit of reading on this subject.

VMware Infrastructure 3 Getting Started Documentation

I'm not 100% sure what you are trying to achieve from your second paragraph though.