Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

ET — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 21:54:00 GMT

BTW you can run all the server OSs as guest in Virtual PC as well I do this all the time as a developer to test software built for the server. It's not only for desktop OSes

Cheers,

ET

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Megan (the author) — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:02:00 GMT

You're mostly right, ET, but while its true that you can (at least attempt to) install and run any OS that you want on Virtual PC, running server OS's on it isn't supported. And being a good Microsoftie, I listed only supported guest OS's in my article.

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

DG — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:06:00 GMT

If running Server OS's on Virtual PC isn't supported, why are Server OS options present in the New Virtual Machine Wizard in the Operating System selection step? It seems to me that this is a bit of a mixed signal - we don't support it, but here are the options we don't support...? Just a concern, Virtual PC is a great product, and I'm learning more about virtual server.

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Megan (the author) — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:50:00 GMT

Good question, DG. I agree that this is a bit confusing. When the product team removed the server options from the wizard in the pre-release version of Virtual PC 2004, a lot of users thought that the ability to install server OSs had been removed as well. So to reduce confusion, the server options were put back into the wizard.

Many developers like ET use Virtual PC for testing their software. A number of "unsupported" operating systems function perfectly fine in Virtual PC, including servers. Installing and running these operating systems in some situations -- such as for development, unit testing, or personal use -- can make sense (as long as you're willing to accept not having product support for the configuration). However, it isn't appropriate (or wise) to run servers on Virtual PC in a production environment. Virtual PC doesn't give you the resource management or scalability that you need to run production servers. You should use Virtual Server to run servers. If server OSs were supported on Virtual PC some people would inevitably try to use it to run production servers, and would end up having problems.

So the upshot is that confusion was reduced for some, but created for others. It's likely that this issue will be reconsidered for the next release.

Virtual PC vs Virtual Server

Lorenzo Barbieri @ UGIblogs! — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 11:58:00 GMT

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

TomB — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:27:00 GMT

I think there is one other important difference that you neglected to mention. You probably didn't mention it because it's so obvious, but the Virtual Server runs as a service on the host system. Whereas; the Virtual PC runs as an application.

The Virtual Server comes with a client application that can be run from a remote machine, to connect to the Virtual Servers. This is really cool for someone like me, who's desktop machine isn't powerful enough to be running a whole bunch of virtual machines. I put them all on the server, I have access to them, and can screw them up all I want.

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Some Clown — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 15:14:00 GMT

TomB - you can use remote desktop to connect to a Virtual PC running on another machine, so if you've got RDP-enabled OSs running, you dont need virtual server for that either. i used to run 4 VPC sessions on one box, and then access all 4 of those VPCs *plus* the host box, all from one MMC console with RDP sessions set up.

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Sam — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 02:24:00 GMT

I have successfully installed Windows server 2003 domain controller onto Virtual PC. My laptop OS is Windows XP Professional. How can I use my desktop OS (Windows XP) as a client for Virtual PC (Windows 2003 DC) ??
The reason for this scenario is to enable me to study for MS 70-290 exam.
Tried Virtual Switch and Shared Networking (NAT) but I seem to be going wrong somewhere. All requests to ping the server (192.168.131.1 / 24) from the client (192.168.131.2 /24) are failing.

Somebody please help!!

re: Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Megan Davis — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:38:00 GMT

Sam, here's what Ed Reed, a developer here at Microsoft says about your configuration:

You won’t be able to use Shared Networking (NAT) as the host cannot talk to the guest and vice versa. If you need guest to host connectivity, you need to use Virtual Switch with either a physical network card or Loopback adapter.

However, there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem with using a virtual machine for the DC. This is because the virtual machine will not be available during startup of the host OS. I don’t believe that this scenario will work. Your best bet is to create a fully virtual network topology for the domain; that is, in addition to the DC guest, create one or more domain member guests and connect them together via the Local Only network. You’ll need to use static IP addresses or setup the DHCP server on the DC, but this will work better than trying to use the host as the domain member.

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