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Thread ID: 116208 2011-02-21 17:28:00 Virtualising on Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit thekiwi (13345) Press F1
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1180200 2011-02-21 17:28:00 Hi all

Just wanting some advise / guidance on what is the best/recommended software to use for Virtualising a machine I have here at home.

Ive got a box with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (MSI P55A-G55 MB, Intel i7-870 CPU, 8Gb DDR3-1333 RAM and 1 Tb in Raid 1, plus 500Gb for OS etc).

The box is going to be running Mediaportal TV Server in a headless setup. To keep it simple my plan is to run the HostOS as Windows 7 Pro so that I dont have to do any PCI Passthrough to get the Media Server working virtualised. THe mediaserver has 3 x PCI cards (2xDVB-S and 1 x Analogue) so figured its just easier to have it as the Host.

The CPU and MB both support VT-d and Vt-x ... so a hypervisor type approach, in theory, is a possibility.

What I want to do is replace my current big, loud, power hungry Small Business Server with a 2011 Server in a virtualised GuestOS on the above machine. From what Ive read VMWare "may" allow this to be installed... but Windows 7 is not one of their recommended/supported HostOS's, although it appears it may have been not long ago.

Does anyone have an experience/opinion on VMware vs Zen vs VBoxetc for the above scenario? The load on the SBS is pretty minimal ... ie its just me using it :) What would people suggest?

Cheers
thekiwi (13345)
1180201 2011-02-21 17:54:00 If it's going to be minimal then it doesn't matter a lot what you use.

You could look forwards and wonder if you're going to re-deploy the image at all, or make it a dedicated machine ... But other than that, I wouldn't read too much into it. Just grab VirtualBox perhaps and go from there? ;)
Chilling_Silence (9)
1180202 2011-02-21 19:28:00 Seeing you're using 7 Pro you can download Windows Virtual PC which runs in XP mode.
(Think I said that correctly!)
Neil McC (178)
1180203 2011-02-23 22:41:00 Seeing you're using 7 Pro you can download Windows Virtual PC which runs in XP mode.
(Think I said that correctly!)

Windows Virtual PC doesn't support 64 bit guests, SBS 2011 is 64bit only
nmercer (3899)
1180204 2011-02-23 22:43:00 Hi all

Just wanting some advise / guidance on what is the best/recommended software to use for Virtualising a machine I have here at home.

Ive got a box with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (MSI P55A-G55 MB, Intel i7-870 CPU, 8Gb DDR3-1333 RAM and 1 Tb in Raid 1, plus 500Gb for OS etc).

The box is going to be running Mediaportal TV Server in a headless setup. To keep it simple my plan is to run the HostOS as Windows 7 Pro so that I dont have to do any PCI Passthrough to get the Media Server working virtualised. THe mediaserver has 3 x PCI cards (2xDVB-S and 1 x Analogue) so figured its just easier to have it as the Host.

The CPU and MB both support VT-d and Vt-x ... so a hypervisor type approach, in theory, is a possibility.

What I want to do is replace my current big, loud, power hungry Small Business Server with a 2011 Server in a virtualised GuestOS on the above machine. From what Ive read VMWare "may" allow this to be installed... but Windows 7 is not one of their recommended/supported HostOS's, although it appears it may have been not long ago.

Does anyone have an experience/opinion on VMware vs Zen vs VBoxetc for the above scenario? The load on the SBS is pretty minimal ... ie its just me using it :) What would people suggest?

Cheers

Minimum specs of SBS 2011 RAM is 8GB, for support, but it will install on less

Any of those that support running on Win7 with 64bit guests will work
nmercer (3899)
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