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On the Mac I use VMware Fusion to run various other operating systems and applications. The new release of VMware Fusion features many optimizations and some great features that integrate applications running on a foreign OS directly into the host environment. VMware achieves that with Unity and even provides a quick search  button from which applications can be found in a VM. In the past, I’ve used the VMware Converter to convert physical systems into virtual machines – it’s a great way to create an exact duplicate for reference purposes or hive off an SAP development system for use elsewhere, for example. A standard feature in the Fusion product is the ability to create a mirror image of a Windows system for use on the Mac. I unsuccessfully attempted to run this a number of times whilst G2S was still running the Windows 7 RC. The Migration Assistant is a small executable that is installed on the source machine – Bonjour is installed, and in true Mac fashion, the source is found by simply keying in the four digit value the Migration Assistant displays. On the RC installation, G2S would simply freeze and require a restart. No migration would take place. With the full install of Windows 7 Ultimate, I had absolutely no trouble. One requirement: after the installation of the Migration Assistant component for the PC, a reboot of the Windows machine seems to be necessary – I could not get the Migration Assistant to find the source machine, by Bonjour or IP address. After a reboot, the connection is instantaneous and the copy process begins.

For the 57GB or so of data to be migrated from G2S, about five hours was estimated. That’s over a wired connection. In practice, that estimate was too high. The operation completed after approximately three hour or so.

Startup of the VM on the iMac took a bit of time, especially since Windows needs to find a bunch of drivers and determine its new base of operations. After that, all functionality of the system together with all the data is available for use.

The VM will be a handy system to have access to when I’m out an about and have only the MacBook with me.

The Windows 7 RC is humming along quite nicely, and I promise that this will be the last Microsoft post for a while. The additional download of a Virtual XP environment intrigued me enough to download and install it. I can’t quite understand what the purpose of a Virtual PC running XP in Windows 7 can be, but here goes.

First off, it is a requirement that the target machine has a modern Intel processor capable of Virtualization Technology. Most Intel Core Duo‘s or better have this feature, but to be sure I downloaded Intel‘s CPU identification utility. The utility provides a basic overview of the CPU‘s capabilities

and the all-important Yes for the required virtualization support.

With the basic hardware requirement met, I downloaded the first of two files from Microsoft‘s site. Initially, a support package needs to be installed. The installation is quick, but requires a reboot. After the reboot, the system is ready to accept the installation program to complete the setup of Virtual Windows XP.

A few clicks is all it takes. The setup routine basically installs a virtual machine environment, then populates a pre-built disk image containing a functional Windows XP system.

There is no option to enter a user name for the OS, only a password. The name of the user is…User. That should be difficult to forget. Multiple logons are not possible with the free copy of XP Microsoft provides in the virtual PC environment.

Since we are talking about a vulnerable OS inside another vulnerable OS, it may be prudent to permit this XP to check for updates…

Once the setup has completed, you are left with a guest Windows XP system inside a virtual machine running on top of Windows 7. A nice feature is that the host OS drives are available automatically, permitting easy sharing of files from one environment to another. How this affects the overall security of the system as a whole is a totally different question: Windows 7 requires some form of virus protection, as does XP. That means installing anti-virus measures in the guest OS to ensure that no nasties bite the host. Anti-virus is not exactly a performance improver, and we are talking a basic virtual machine here. Extra functions to handle USB devices, power the VM off and send a Ctrl-Alt-Del to the guest OS are accessible from the Virtual PC menu bar.

I can’t see any corporate wanting to upgrade existing systems to Windows 7 only to run legacy applications inside a virtual machine environment. The headaches that would cause, not to mention the wasted administrative effort is simply not worth contemplating. Then, there’s the issue of the guest and host being very interoperable which makes most security types a bit nervous and requires two anti-virus licenses, at the very least. The virtual machine environment is dedicated to the single instance of XP, so it’s unusable for, say, Ubuntu or anything else, for that matter. It’s a lot of software for a simple XP setup that already runs well enough on a low-end desktop.

In my opinion, the provision of an XP emulation mode is not a bad thing, but the implementation by way of a complete, separate VM makes no sense: wouldn’t it have been possible to simply provide an XP wrapper in the main OS to run programs that require such support? Overall, I’m a bit confused as to what the Virtual XP thing is all about. Take one free copy of Virtualbox, add as many operating systems as you wish on top of your host OS and you have a much better, more flexible solution. With Virtualbox, the guest OS can be backed up, snapshots created and moved around as an image. That’s not possible with the Microsoft Virtual XP environment.

Virtualization will drive computing into a very interesting future. I’ve been fiddling a fair amount with virtualization, preferring VirtualBox and VMware Server. The problem with those two solutions is the fact that they are not native (or bare-metal) virtualization solutions. In other words, the software that performs the virtualization function is installed on top of a host operating system, then utilizes that operating system to provide services to the guest systems it contains. That leads to poor resource allocation and, most of all, poor performance. The component that performs the virtualization is the Hypervisor, and ideally that component should be installed directly onto a system without the need for an operating system. In effect, the Hypervisor is the operating system, albeit one that performs very specific functions.

Of course, these solutions exist. They are just far too expensive for the hobbyist or small to medium enterprise. But, once again, there is hope. Aiming to gain traction for its high-end ESX virtualization product, VMware recently announced the free version: VMware ESXi. Certain features that make ESX a groundbreaking solution in large computing environments are not provided in the free version, but the most important virtualization functions are there. Best of all, the installed system is only 32MB in size! Has to be Linux

The ESXi Hypervisor is installed in place of an operating system and hosts guest operating systems as required. I’ve downloaded the software but haven’t had the opportunity to try it out yet. It should run on a non-certified system, provided the components within the system are not too outlandish and support certain standards.