Video: Centrally Deploying a Windows XP Virtual Machine using MED-V 1.0

Anyone who’s played with Windows 7 will/should know about Windows XP Mode.  If you’re not familiar, quickly, read here, then come back!

So, XP Mode allows a seamless integration between a virtualised Windows XP instance, and a locally installed Windows Vista, however, it’s configured locally, managed, well, pretty much locally, so in terms of an infrastructure wide rollout, it’s not what you’d class as centralised.  If you did want to roll out Windows XP Mode centrally, you’d first have to push out Virtual PC to the end user devices, then you’d have to somehow push the XP mode image (about 400MB+) to the devices, then you’d have to configure the settings of that XP Mode image, and then, to centrally manage it you’d have to join it to the domain manually (but I guess some of it could be scripted etc) and then, and only then, does it really become part of your centrally managed infrastructure.

There is an easier way.  MED-V.  Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation is effectively the same concept as above, however it centrally automates much of what I’ve said above.  Rather than go into too much detail, have a watch of the video below and see what you think.  It’s not a virtualboy video, so don’t expect my voice, or zoom/pan effects – it’s just good quality informative content.