>Virtual PC from Connectix, and will soon release several products based on
>that (server and workstation).
>The Virtual PC Workstation product has been released. Installing and
setting up virtual machines is quite a bit slower, >but they run much, much
faster than under VMWare, in my experience. Until VMware's recent price drop
it was >considerably cheaper too.
I've never used VMWare so can't comment on the speed, but I do really love
the VPC solution (I've used it since before the MS buyout).
I'm also on the beta for MS Virtual server and that works insanely well as
well (and the VPC images are completely portable between the two products
which makes my life easier).
You do need RAM and horsepower to run them well - my Virtual Service is a
Dual PIII 1000 with 1.5 Gig of RAM. But with that I can run (simultaneously
and well) several VMs (all running Windows 2000 server in the VM). I've got
a dedicated CFMX 6.1 server, a CF 4.5 server, a Metrics server (running only
Smarter Stats), a WebSphere 5 server (which needs the most RAM - the greedy
beast) and a SQL Server 2000 server. All run at the same time with no
problems on one piece of hardware.
On my desktop (a 3.06 Ghz HT P4 with 1 Gig of RAM), using the released VPC
software I can run pretty much anything - although the pre-alpha version of
Longhorn does take several minutes to load in a VPC. ;^) But I run another
WindowsXP machine in a window which hosts all the annoying applications I
need for work, plus, on demand, several others (Win98, Mandrake, etc) as I
need them.
One of the best things about testing this way is that any problems found are
"portable" - you can simply copy the disk image for the problem VPC to a DVD
then transfer it to an office computer to show somebody. It cuts down
tremendously on the "well, it doesn't work on my PC at home" type issues.
It's also great because you can install a "base OS" for each OS you care
about then copy that quickly to create a dedicated VPC to test some install
or problem. To create another clean test system you just recopy the baseOS
and start over (takes about 30 seconds).
VMWare would offer all of the same benefits as well, I'm sure - I've just
never used it.
Jim Davis
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