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    Can we run WHS Beta 2 inside Virtual PC or VMWare if we don't have a dedicated box to test it on?

     Thanks,

     TowerDave

    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 11:40 AM

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     David Hampson wrote:

    Scott,

    Thanks for the reply. I was more curious as to whether or not this was a "supported" configuration or not. I'm about to get the HD space needed to test this, but don't have a physical box. I'd love to try it out, and VPC or VMWare or something like that is the only way I'm going to be able to, if at all.

    Can anyone from MS comment on whether this will be a supported config?

    Thanks,

    Dave H.

    It is not Supported in Beta2 and probably will not be support in the final release.

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 1:57 AM
    Moderator

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    I installed it using VPC2007 and had no issues, all went through perfectly.
    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 12:38 PM
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    Scott,

    Thanks for the reply. I was more curious as to whether or not this was a "supported" configuration or not. I'm about to get the HD space needed to test this, but don't have a physical box. I'd love to try it out, and VPC or VMWare or something like that is the only way I'm going to be able to, if at all.

    Can anyone from MS comment on whether this will be a supported config?

    Thanks,

    Dave H.

    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 3:26 PM
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    Why do you care if its supported?  It works...  I've run WHS inside VPC and backed up / restored a client in VMWare Server using the WHS restore CD.  Restore CD doesn't work in VPC 2007 RC for some reason.

    I don't think you'd want to run WHS as a virtual machine permanantly but as a test system it should be fine.  I'd be very surprised if MS wouldn't accept bugs because WHS was a vm - they're not spec'ing hardware configurations beyond a minimum HW specificaiton.  Also, its based on Windows 2003 server and that's supported in a vm.

    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:56 PM
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    Some teams just aren't interested in VM scenarios if they're not looking at them. It's a reasonable question to ask.

     

    That said - on Connect there seems to be some feedback indicating MSFT employees have been testing on a VM...

    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 7:12 PM
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    I think its a great idea!  Does it support USB2 in VM environment?
    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 7:43 PM
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    Virtual PC does not really support USB hardware, but VMWare does...But, if you're thinking about adding harddrives to a virtual server..you don't need physical hardware to do that.....
    Tuesday, February 13, 2007 11:32 PM
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    When installing WHS to VPC 2004 SP1, it reported an error to do with the video card. Sorry I didn't capture the screen/error. I also tried it in VMWare Virtual Server too, however it won't want to start the setup, even though it boot up the ISO properly.

    While along this direction, what if you have Windows SBS2003 R2 at home for email/Exchange service purpose, and to save the number of physical box and along with other cost saving. Can one install WHS onto Virtual Server 2005 R2 on Windows SBS2003 R2?

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:26 AM
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    To be honest, I think that running WHS in a Virtual Machine sort of ignores all of the cool work the product team has put into WHS storage functionality.

    WHS offers a unique expanding storage solution and while you may get the basic functionality of WHS via a Virtual Machine (account synchronization, shared folders, etc) performance will probably not be nearly as good (I guess you could run some benchmarks to check this?) and who really knows about reliability. Do you really want to risk corrupting one file and losing an entire backup server? :)

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:45 AM
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     David Hampson wrote:

    Scott,

    Thanks for the reply. I was more curious as to whether or not this was a "supported" configuration or not. I'm about to get the HD space needed to test this, but don't have a physical box. I'd love to try it out, and VPC or VMWare or something like that is the only way I'm going to be able to, if at all.

    Can anyone from MS comment on whether this will be a supported config?

    Thanks,

    Dave H.

    It is not Supported in Beta2 and probably will not be support in the final release.

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 1:57 AM
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    I do have it setup at home for personal use.  It's running on SBS2003 and Virtual Server 2005 R2.  I have Windows Home Server running on a VHD located on a external USB 2.0 drive. I could later add another hard drive placing the VHD onto another USB 2.0 drive and turn duplication on. I have been playing around with it for a few weeks now (but not watching it closely). Everything "seems" to work OK.  I have had to reboot the virtual machine a couple of times though.  I even set it up for remote access.  My Xbox works great with it but took 30 seconds to initially load the library.  All this while working with a mixed environment of my work pc's (domain controlled at Microsoft) and my house pc's running as a workgroup.
    Wednesday, February 14, 2007 6:05 AM
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    I have tried installing/running SBS2003 R2 inside WHS using Virtual Server 2005 R2. Went alright but painfully slow as the system that WHS is running on is a Celeron 2.4GHz with 768MB ram. Poor hardware choice but is the only spare system I have.

    Not satisfy with the performance, so I decided to try WHS inside virtual environment. And instead of VS2005R2, as it doesn't support Physical HDD (RAW) for booting up, I tried VMware Server (free) and installed it on SBS2003 R2.

    My VM specification is based on using Windows Small Business Server 2003, with 512MB, VMware BusLogic SCSI (40GB), and use the downloaded VMware SCSI driver. IDE CD-ROM, Virtual Floppy (mapped with VMware SCSI driver), bridged network. The installation went well and smooth and relatively quick. After the successful installation, I installed the VMware Tool, and removed the IDE CD-ROM and Virtual Floppy as I have no use for them on "day-to-day" WHS operation.

    My next step is to try installing WHS onto physical HDD directly. The reason why I chose VMware Server instead of VS2005 R2 is of this reason, although VS2005 R2 support Linked Virtual HDD, however it cannot be used for booting up. With VMware Server, you can set the HDD solely for a particual VM, and by removing the drive letter (or drive access) from the Disk Manager, that will prevent any access to the drive via Explorer or using drive letter reference.

    I am sure when WHS has gone gold, it will not be supported in virtual environment. But my hunch is that, some (if not most) of us will still install it in virtual environment to consolidate the number of physical box, and also with more powerful CPU and faster RAM and Hard Disk, utilising virtualisation will help saving cost, regardless how little.

    Friday, February 16, 2007 2:19 AM
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    I'm going to try this. Just ordered 2GB of RAM and a 400GB drive for my PC, mainly to run VMs.

    I'll update the board once I get it going.

    TowerDave

    Saturday, February 17, 2007 10:49 PM
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    When i try to load the driver for the SCSI disk in vmware it says it loads successfully but does not detect any drives.  Do you have any caveats.  I am using VMWare Free Server 1.02 w/ the driver.  I usually wait till it asks me if i want to load a driver for it.  When can you press F6?
    Tuesday, March 6, 2007 2:17 AM
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    I have successfully used XP Virtual PC machines as WHS clients.
    I was even able to do a backup of a VPC machine and restore it to a new VHD file.  Worked perfectly.
    Thursday, March 8, 2007 2:35 AM
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    I've got my WHS running inside Virtual PC 2007. VMWare doesn't support SATA drives, or at least it wouldn't let me put my Virtual Disks on my new SATA drive.

    It's working great though in VPC2007, no problems. If I can save up the money, I may be able to get the hardware, but I may just stick with SBS, and upgrade to the Longhorn version when it is released.

    Dave Hampson

    Friday, March 9, 2007 3:12 AM
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    I'm install the CTP at this time with VMWare Server (Free Version). I setup Windows XP with 2 40GB HDs, formatted, OS loaded, etc. Then restarted system and hit ESC to get boot menu. Selected boot from DVD and when I started the install it was able to find both HDs and is installing. I was not successful trying other routes.
    Friday, April 20, 2007 12:27 PM
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    Yes, WHS installs and runs correctly in VMWare 5.5 and ditto player.

    I performed a clients restore from VMWare, no problems noted (except for the 'open backup' bug)

    Friday, May 4, 2007 2:13 PM
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    I have the same problem.   I followed the steps mentioned in htis post and chose VMware's BUSLOGIC adapter instead of LSI (which I tried first), but it's telling me it doesn't detect a suitable drive to install WHS on.

     

    I tried connecting the CD drive to the VMTools ISO and grabbing the SCSI driver from there to no avail.

     

    The only difference is that I'm using VMware ESX3.01 and not the free VMware Server product, but I doubt that would make a difference in this case.

    Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:09 AM
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    hi everyone...i have installed virtual pc 2007 with win xp. The main OS is vista ultimate 64 bit....the prob with VPC 2007 is it does not detect when i insert a USB camera or a pen drive...do i need to download any drivers..plz someone help me with this problem....

    Thanks and Regards...
             Vish,,,
    Saturday, December 15, 2007 4:25 AM
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    Defragging can help boost speed.  Diskeeper just came out with a new product, Diskeeper 2009 www.diskeeper.com
    Thursday, December 4, 2008 9:12 PM