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I have been using the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Evaluation Kit for the last few days and I am quite impressed.
Initially there were some problems with the download. It kept giving me corrupted zip files. I wasn't able to find any support mechanisms on the site so I mailed support@microsoft.com. That was a mistake as it took 5 e-mails just to get them to read what my actual problem was. Eventually Barry got me a working version through his box in America.
The install was quite simple, although it did require that I install IIS. This is because the entire thing can only be managed through a web interface.
After the install the Master Virtual Server config was opened in Firefox as it is my default browser. That didn't work so well and I had to open it in the browser that fucks things up.
Creating a virtual server is dead easy. You give it a name, choose the size of the hard drive and RAM and specify whether it should be part of the internal or external network.
After creating your machine you turn it on and are greeted with a horrible ActiveX interface to control the machine. The interface is inside the browser that fucks things up so you need to do some resizing to make sure you can see the window. Then you need to click on the little display at which point you shouldn't have any hope of using your mouse, it doesn't work, you need to use the keyboard. The mouse will either sit at the top rleft or bottom right corner of the screen. This happened in knoppix, Win98 SE, WinXP Pro and Win 2003, so I think it is the actual viewer app. Why can't we have a nice external app, or even better let us use Remote Desktop (or rdesktop for the unix people)?
The first thing I tried was to attatch the normal CD-ROM drive as my virtual machine's CD-ROM and stuck a KNoppix CD in there. It booted but took a very long time. It also spouted a bunch of errors about how the cloop was loosing information. X was completely unusable so I tried booting to only text mode, this didn't work so well either beacuse the cloop errors prevented most apps from running. It seems Virtual Server isn't so compatable with linux, unlike Microsoft's claims.
Next up I got an installation of Windows 2003 Server going. I was using a virtual drive size of 1GB and Windows XP and above need at least 1.2GB. This meant that I had to either grow the existing drive or make a new one. The interface to do this is not intuitive and is quite irritating. In the end I manually browsed to where the file was stored, deleted it, and created a new one.
There are some cool features like the ability to add tons of virtual devices and make them point to whatever you want, from an actual disk to an ISO. But beware it won't touch network mounted ISO's i.e. don't map the drive.
The other feature which works quite well is the pause'ing and save'ing of states. When you don't want to use a machine any more you just save it and turn it off. You can come back tomorrow and load it up in the exact state it was before. A standard feature but fun none the less.
Right now I have a Windows XP, Windows 98 SE and Windows 2003 machine running at the same time, now if only I can get out of the licensing hell.
I have not used VMWare or any other virtual server environments, but this is quite easy and fast to configure with the only downsides being trouble with linux and a horrible interface to the actual virtual machine. I would like to use VMWare if it wasn't so expensive, after reading Bowulf's post.
UPDATE:
The mouse works fine if I use virtual server from the console and not over rdesktop. So there are some rdesktop integration issues. Also Slackware works fine, it is just the compressed loop back that knoppix uses that breaks.
UPDATE2:
I searched around for a while to find somewhere to report these bugs to. I eventually found the wish site where I chose 'Other' for the product and entered this post:
First off the product is Virtual Server 2005 evaluation. I can't find anywhere else to submit a bug report.
The biggest two bus I found are:
1) When using the ActiveX control to interface with a virtual machine the mouse doesn't work properly if you are accessing the machine hosting the virtual server's via remote desktop.
2) A virtual machine running linux off a compressed loop device (cloop) e.g. knoppix has many errors where the cloop discards random chunks of itself.
Those are the bugs. I have a request for improvement:
1) Make it optional to install IIS. This would require a seperate app.
Thanks
I was then given a thank you. Let's see what happens.
The install was quite simple, although it did require that I install IIS. This is because the entire thing can only be managed through a web interface.
After the install the Master Virtual Server config was opened in Firefox as it is my default browser. That didn't work so well and I had to open it in the browser that fucks things up.
Creating a virtual server is dead easy. You give it a name, choose the size of the hard drive and RAM and specify whether it should be part of the internal or external network.
After creating your machine you turn it on and are greeted with a horrible ActiveX interface to control the machine. The interface is inside the browser that fucks things up so you need to do some resizing to make sure you can see the window. Then you need to click on the little display at which point you shouldn't have any hope of using your mouse, it doesn't work, you need to use the keyboard. The mouse will either sit at the top rleft or bottom right corner of the screen. This happened in knoppix, Win98 SE, WinXP Pro and Win 2003, so I think it is the actual viewer app. Why can't we have a nice external app, or even better let us use Remote Desktop (or rdesktop for the unix people)?
The first thing I tried was to attatch the normal CD-ROM drive as my virtual machine's CD-ROM and stuck a KNoppix CD in there. It booted but took a very long time. It also spouted a bunch of errors about how the cloop was loosing information. X was completely unusable so I tried booting to only text mode, this didn't work so well either beacuse the cloop errors prevented most apps from running. It seems Virtual Server isn't so compatable with linux, unlike Microsoft's claims.
Next up I got an installation of Windows 2003 Server going. I was using a virtual drive size of 1GB and Windows XP and above need at least 1.2GB. This meant that I had to either grow the existing drive or make a new one. The interface to do this is not intuitive and is quite irritating. In the end I manually browsed to where the file was stored, deleted it, and created a new one.
There are some cool features like the ability to add tons of virtual devices and make them point to whatever you want, from an actual disk to an ISO. But beware it won't touch network mounted ISO's i.e. don't map the drive.
The other feature which works quite well is the pause'ing and save'ing of states. When you don't want to use a machine any more you just save it and turn it off. You can come back tomorrow and load it up in the exact state it was before. A standard feature but fun none the less.
Right now I have a Windows XP, Windows 98 SE and Windows 2003 machine running at the same time, now if only I can get out of the licensing hell.
I have not used VMWare or any other virtual server environments, but this is quite easy and fast to configure with the only downsides being trouble with linux and a horrible interface to the actual virtual machine. I would like to use VMWare if it wasn't so expensive, after reading Bowulf's post.
UPDATE:
The mouse works fine if I use virtual server from the console and not over rdesktop. So there are some rdesktop integration issues. Also Slackware works fine, it is just the compressed loop back that knoppix uses that breaks.
UPDATE2:
I searched around for a while to find somewhere to report these bugs to. I eventually found the wish site where I chose 'Other' for the product and entered this post:
First off the product is Virtual Server 2005 evaluation. I can't find anywhere else to submit a bug report.
The biggest two bus I found are:
1) When using the ActiveX control to interface with a virtual machine the mouse doesn't work properly if you are accessing the machine hosting the virtual server's via remote desktop.
2) A virtual machine running linux off a compressed loop device (cloop) e.g. knoppix has many errors where the cloop discards random chunks of itself.
Those are the bugs. I have a request for improvement:
1) Make it optional to install IIS. This would require a seperate app.
Thanks
I was then given a thank you. Let's see what happens.
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