Psycs said:
jimbo45 said:
Hi there
The BEST way for running VM's (Please note here I'm not talking about XP MODE HERE) is to use something like VMWARE server (FREE).

You can then have the VM's start automatically in the Background at boot (and shutdown).

The nice thing about this is that a USER can log directly on to a VM WITHOUT having to have an account on the HOST machine. (Needs an account on the VM of course). -- This is a great way of say running a Webserver - on the Virtual machine.

What's even better if your VM's are SEVERS as well then your users can log directly on to the application (for example ORACLE / SAP (etc etc) without even needing an account on the VM either.

If there's enough people who are interested I'll try and make a tutorial on how to set this up.

Cheers
jimbo
I know this topic is quite a few months old, but i've been searching for a while and can't find how to log into a guest virtual machine before logging into the host machine. How do you log directly into a VM without having an account on the host machine?

Basically what I want to do is have vmware server start at boot up and have a user log directly into a virtual machine without ever having to log into the host. Is this possible and how do I do this. I've seen where you can mount a vhd at boot up so you boot directly to that, but that's not exactly what i'm looking for.

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks. : )
Hi there

Sorry if my post was a bit misleading -- what I meant was that you can log on to a VM running say on a W7 HOST without having an account on that HOST -- but your VM will need to be accessible via a Network so the user can logon from a CLIENT machine by using something like RDP. (Remote Desktop).

For example say your host is called CAT, your VM is called DOG and the remote user who wants to connect to your VM has a machine called FOX.

What you have to do is to ensure remote user can to RDP to DOG FROM HIS OWN MACHINE so you need to make DOG available on the network.

What using vmserver does is allow a number of virtual machines to be started IN THE BACKGROUND when the HOST is booted up.

With normal vm's on a workstation a user needs to be logged on to the HOST, then he / she starts the VM software as a user application and then logs on to the VM.

By using vmware server you are running your workstation as a sort of server.

(Note that if these VM's are XP / W7 etc then the normal restriction still applies in that only one user can login to the vm at a time. -- Running something like W2K3 or W2008 servers as a virtual machine is a much better proposition but more complex and expensive .

3 VM's for example can be running with a different SINGLE user on them of course.


BTW I'm not sure but I think currently vmware workstation rel 8 will also allow you to run VM's in the background -- however I think (although I could be wrong) someone has to start the vmware application at initial boot.

Read this

https://www.vmware.com/support/ws80/...tation_80.html


Cheers
and Happy Hols

Jimbo