Back in March I blogged looking for instructions to set up a Virtual Machine. I even asked this question to the attendees of GLGDW 2006. I flat out have not had a single pointer to some decent resources. This surprises me.
Since this time I have run across two good resources I want to share with you. The first is a book called The Rational Guide To: Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (Amazon link here). It is a short book and has some decent pointers on configuration and setup of VirtualPC. While this book has some simple topics and states some obvious points, you will definitely get your US$10 worth from the read.
The second resource is a new whitepaper from Ronald Beekelaar and John Paul Cook titled Developing and Debugging Software Inside of Virtual Machines. You can get this whitepaper free of charge of on Microsoft’s VirtualPC site. Besides the testing and debugging topic, this whitepaper helps you with copying a virtual machine (VM) to save you time setting up different configurations of the same OS, making new VM, and configuring advanced networking scenarios.
Neither of these resources resolved all the things I was looking for initially, but between the two I have been able to answer most of the questions. Hopefully if you are in the market for some answers to similar questions you will find these resources helpful.
Hi Rick,
Here is another blog to add to your list of blogs you read. One of the VirtualPC team members blogs about what is going on development wise, and some fun things in VirtualPC.
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/default.aspx
Thanks for pointing out this resource Tracy. I have been subscribed to Ben Armstrong’s blog for a long time now.
Rick,
Funny, I just decided to take the time to install VPC and set up a Win Server 2003 VPC so I could test installs of out .Net web app. We have ghost in the lab, but it takes so long to re-image the PC. So, I read the VFP had undo and difference disks so I went for it.
While I was installing 2003 in the VFP I came accross this article. Pretty good info.
http://andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/UseVirtualPCsDifferencingDisksToYourAdvantage.aspx
I’ll also look at the ones you posted. Been a while, hope all is well with you!
Bob Archer
Rick, have you compared VirtualPC to VMware? VMWare seems much snappier on the limited hardware I have to use, but I haven’t really taxed it yet.
Yes, a while ago at a previous company I worked at. VirtualPC is part of my MSDN subscription and is working fine for what I need.
Thanks for the favorable mention. I’m always looking for new virtual machine topics to write about. Let me know what specific questions are still unanswered. johnpaulcook AT hotmail