Brain exploded

[charlesr]

Just put ubuntu in a virtualbox on an XP machine and then turned on seamless mode.

Mind blown.

[EvilBoris]

Yeah tis cool, Windows 7 Does the same thing with it's XP virtual machine.
You can even have an icon on your windows 7 desktop and when you open it it'll open the program which is actually running in the XP virtual machine but in the Win7 environment

[k0pp0]

I love virtualisation tech, it's my bread and butter now. As I write this I'm patching up a load of vmware servers.

[charlesr]

I have windows 7 home premium. How do I get xp vm? I have an old xp sp2 disc. oem I think.

[k0pp0]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

[smouty]

The client stuff is impressive but you should see what you can do on the server side now.
iSCSI SANs for client storage, fully redundant hosting with no downtime when switching hosts, auto load balancing etc. This is on ESXi 4.x.
To watch a client being moved from one host to another and not drop a ping response is impressive.
When spec a server now you can order a pre-installed USB stick or some have some flash RAM built in for booting ESXi.

[Roddie]

Never mind putting Ubuntu in a virtual box, set it as your primary install!

[charlesr]

I can't quite yet. It's my work laptop. At the moment it's dual boot and I predominantly use Ubuntu (with Lotus Notes and OpenOffice), but there are a few windows only items I have to use (that don't work with Wine) and the mandated HDD encryption doesn't work with dual boot, so for the moment, I'm going virtual for compliance.

Same with my home PC, although progress is being made on things like linux support for Logitech Harmony (concordance), my bluetooth DECT phone cannot be made to sync with Linux and various other niggles.

[Malc]

Just spent the last 30 minutes googleing Ubuntu, Virtual box and seamless mode to understand what you were all talking about.

Now I understand, it does seem like a pretty streamlined piece of tech which I'd never heard of before.

I assume it is also possible to use Virtual Box to get old games like Doom (which aren't very stable through Dosbox on Windows 7), to run nicely through an XP guest operating system?

[k0pp0]

The client stuff is impressive but you should see what you can do on the server side now.
iSCSI SANs for client storage, fully redundant hosting with no downtime when switching hosts, auto load balancing etc. This is on ESXi 4.x.
To watch a client being moved from one host to another and not drop a ping response is impressive.
When spec a server now you can order a pre-installed USB stick or some have some flash RAM built in for booting ESXi.

Yup - that's the next thing for me to plan and deploy.. 700, 53 servers and 56 HP C-Class Chassis. Upgrades to vsphere ahoy - at least we'd have resilient storage failover then.