Laptop Setup
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As mentioned last week, I purchased a new Dell Latitude E6500, with a 4gb of RAM and 250gb of disk. My intent is to use Virtual PC to setup environments for each customer. As the base OS I plan on 64 bit Win XP. Then each virtual instance will have the OS of the customer. Can anyone see flaws in this idea? Does anyone have a better idea? Thanks in advance.
It's good to be alive
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Turtle Hand wrote:
Can anyone see flaws in this idea?
If you will only have one virtual instance active at once, then no. I wouldn't want to run multiple virtual instances on a laptop - the disk I/O won't really be up to the task, and you'll start running out of that 4GB of memory really quickly. Not sure about licensing - would 10 instances need 11 licences (host + 10 guests), or can you run the guests using the host's licence?
The last I've read, MS is allowing 4 instances of the same license[^] in a VM environment.
It's good to be alive
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I'd probably go with Vista 64, but that's just me. I've had pretty positive experiences with it (it helps to run it in Classic mode) so far, though I've never used XP 64.
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I consider Vista, but I have enough change going on in my career right now, introducing this just seems like unnecessary grief.
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Is XP64 officially supported? If not do you have a known source for all your drivers?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Granted, this is a few years old, but now I am scared. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1795/[^] Do you know if drivers and support for Vista 64 bit are any better?
It's good to be alive
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Turtle Hand wrote:
Can anyone see flaws in this idea?
If you will only have one virtual instance active at once, then no. I wouldn't want to run multiple virtual instances on a laptop - the disk I/O won't really be up to the task, and you'll start running out of that 4GB of memory really quickly. Not sure about licensing - would 10 instances need 11 licences (host + 10 guests), or can you run the guests using the host's licence?
I expect only 1 VM running at a time.
It's good to be alive
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The last I've read, MS is allowing 4 instances of the same license[^] in a VM environment.
It's good to be alive
Turtle Hand wrote:
MS is allowing 4 instances of the same license[^] in a VM environment.
That's true if you're running Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition allows one instance, but since list price for Enterprise is four times list price for standard, it's pretty much the same thing.
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Granted, this is a few years old, but now I am scared. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1795/[^] Do you know if drivers and support for Vista 64 bit are any better?
It's good to be alive
Don't forget that you can use drivers for Server 2003 for XP 64 bit.
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As mentioned last week, I purchased a new Dell Latitude E6500, with a 4gb of RAM and 250gb of disk. My intent is to use Virtual PC to setup environments for each customer. As the base OS I plan on 64 bit Win XP. Then each virtual instance will have the OS of the customer. Can anyone see flaws in this idea? Does anyone have a better idea? Thanks in advance.
It's good to be alive
if you're only going to have one OS running at a time, then why not multi-boot?
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Granted, this is a few years old, but now I am scared. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1795/[^] Do you know if drivers and support for Vista 64 bit are any better?
It's good to be alive
Vista licenses are 32/64 bit. I'd assume that since Vista64/4Gb ram is becoming a commonish config you'd have good luck finding drivers for your laptop. To be safe I'd pick a model that offered Vista64 as an installed option.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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Don't forget that you can use drivers for Server 2003 for XP 64 bit.
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if you're only going to have one OS running at a time, then why not multi-boot?
there are a lot of reasons not to multi-boot. - can only run OS at a time (the OP plans on running 2 at a time host + vm) - more hard drive space required. VM's emulate hardware so you can trick the OS into thinking it is on a 60gb partition when in fact it is only taking up 5-10gb on the hard disk. - windows multiboot doesn't like reinstallations. You must install the oldest OS first and if you need to reinstall an older one, all that were installed after it need to be reinstalled as well (or you hafta do some fixup with the boot records but I've never gotten that to work). - multiboot requires you to reboot when changing OS. VM doesn't. - VM allows for saved states. This is kinda like the last one but you don't have to wait on the hardware to boot. just click ON and the VM is ready in the last state that you left it. - REAL restore points. since everything is virtual, you can create a real restore point rather than the psuedo system restore point that microsoft offers in windows. - Can only have 4 (might no be 4 but it is a limited number) OS installed on a single HD. whereas VM allows as many as the hard drive will hold.
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How often are server drivers provided for laptop hardware?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
dan neely wrote:
How often are server drivers provided for laptop hardware?
Quite often. There's a lot of overlap between a blade server and a laptop these days. My point was that if you can't find a driver labelled as suitable for XP64, one labelled as suitable for Server 2003 (a mucb more common operating system) will probably work.
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As mentioned last week, I purchased a new Dell Latitude E6500, with a 4gb of RAM and 250gb of disk. My intent is to use Virtual PC to setup environments for each customer. As the base OS I plan on 64 bit Win XP. Then each virtual instance will have the OS of the customer. Can anyone see flaws in this idea? Does anyone have a better idea? Thanks in advance.
It's good to be alive
I'm pretty sure that Virtual PC doesn't support 64bit clients. In fact, when I last tried it (about 6mo ago), there wasn't any VM software that would install XP64 in a client. Obviously you are talking about the host being XP64 and you hadn't specificly stated that you would be trying to run a 64bit client. But figured I would toss that out there just in case you aren't aware (in case any of your customers are running 64bit).
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I'm pretty sure that Virtual PC doesn't support 64bit clients. In fact, when I last tried it (about 6mo ago), there wasn't any VM software that would install XP64 in a client. Obviously you are talking about the host being XP64 and you hadn't specificly stated that you would be trying to run a 64bit client. But figured I would toss that out there just in case you aren't aware (in case any of your customers are running 64bit).
kinar wrote:
In fact, when I last tried it (about 6mo ago), there wasn't any VM software that would install XP64 in a client.
Hyper-V will do this, and I think a full VMware ESX server will too. Of course, they cost a bit more than Virtual PC :)
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Vista licenses are 32/64 bit. I'd assume that since Vista64/4Gb ram is becoming a commonish config you'd have good luck finding drivers for your laptop. To be safe I'd pick a model that offered Vista64 as an installed option.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I'm assuming that 64bits will let me use all 4 gb and perform faster as well. Maybe I need to bite the bullet with Vista.
It's good to be alive
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dan neely wrote:
How often are server drivers provided for laptop hardware?
Quite often. There's a lot of overlap between a blade server and a laptop these days. My point was that if you can't find a driver labelled as suitable for XP64, one labelled as suitable for Server 2003 (a mucb more common operating system) will probably work.
Will these be listed officially, or will you either need to find a list for your model of someone who manually tried a bunch of likelyish looking server drivers, or beat your head off the wall doing the same?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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I'm assuming that 64bits will let me use all 4 gb and perform faster as well. Maybe I need to bite the bullet with Vista.
It's good to be alive
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I'm pretty sure that Virtual PC doesn't support 64bit clients. In fact, when I last tried it (about 6mo ago), there wasn't any VM software that would install XP64 in a client. Obviously you are talking about the host being XP64 and you hadn't specificly stated that you would be trying to run a 64bit client. But figured I would toss that out there just in case you aren't aware (in case any of your customers are running 64bit).
kinar wrote:
VM software that would install XP64 in a client
Eh? I haven't got a copy of XP64 but VMWare Workstation has handled everything I've thrown at it from x64 distros of Linux / Server 2003 + 2008 / Vista x64 and even Cosmos. To run 64-bit you do have to be running an x64 host.
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
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I'm pretty sure that Virtual PC doesn't support 64bit clients. In fact, when I last tried it (about 6mo ago), there wasn't any VM software that would install XP64 in a client. Obviously you are talking about the host being XP64 and you hadn't specificly stated that you would be trying to run a 64bit client. But figured I would toss that out there just in case you aren't aware (in case any of your customers are running 64bit).
I have run win7 64bit and xp64 both under 64 bit linux using virtual box and vmware. I know kvm vmware esx and xen both support this but I have not tried them. I have also ran 64 bit linux under 64 bit windows.
John
modified on Monday, June 29, 2009 5:40 PM
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kinar wrote:
VM software that would install XP64 in a client
Eh? I haven't got a copy of XP64 but VMWare Workstation has handled everything I've thrown at it from x64 distros of Linux / Server 2003 + 2008 / Vista x64 and even Cosmos. To run 64-bit you do have to be running an x64 host.
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
vmware server and player do allow running 64 bit xp, vista and win7 under them. So does virtualbox.
John