I’m planning to switch from Windows 7 RC to the retail version on my desktop PC. I started wondering which version would I choose.
Theoretically there are 3 choices: Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. However, the price difference between Professional and Ultimate is only 12 euros, so I can choose between Home Premium (183 EUR) and Ultimate (294 EUR).
The biggest advantage of Ultimate over Home Premium is the Virtual PC and XP Mode. I use it to access my old scanner via USB (there are no 64-bit drivers) and play around with Active Directory and servers in my Windows 2003 test lab. Even though those come for free, in reality I have to pay 110 euro for the Virtual PC.
Yesterday I asked myself “do I really need it?” and I ran some tests.
It turned out VMWare has just released a new RC version of their free VMWare Player software. This new version can also be used to create virtual machines, so it’s a full-fledged type 2 hypervisor. It also can connect unregnized USB devices to the VM and provides desktop integration (a bit differently than Virtual PC, but it works). Additionally it has some extra little features, like more advanced network configuration (without the annoying DHCP server), automated unattended installer for Windows OSes and the ability to run different guest OSes than just Windows.
And there’s a free converter tool that lets you convert machines from VirtualPC to VMWare.
I have old unused Windows XP license, so the choice was simple – I’m staying on Home Premium edition.
I was setting up a test Windows 2003 domain network to play around with it. One of servers is a gateway server – hosting ISA 2004.
However, I found an issue there – the “Internal Network” card did not get IP address from DHCP server (installed on domain controller in the local network), but instead an address from APIPA pool.
The weird thing was, it said “Assigned by DHCP”, and the DHCP server itself had an IP address from APIPA range.
.
I tried pinging this DHCP, sniff it etc. but with no results. Then I found some hint about a built-in DHCP server into Virtual PC. This DHCP server replies faster than my DHCP server on virtual domain controller, so it always won.
To remove this problem, you have to modify the System Policy Rule called “Allow DHCP replies from DHCP servers to ISA Server” to not allow the built-it DHCP server. To do this, go to ISA Server Management -> Firewall Policy and click “Edit System Policy” in Tasks pane. Go to DHCP rule (first one) and add a new exception.
Create a new computer with IP address 169.254.0.1 and add it to excetions. This way the built-in DHCP server will not be allowed to assign IP address to your virtual NIC and it will get the IP from other DHCP servers in your network. Which is exactly what we wanted.
Virtualisation is coming more and more into our lives.
Right now I’m setting up a “jail” XP virtual machine to install a stubborn application there (that doesn’t work with Vista and is sometimes affected by patches, so it needs a special treatment) and playing around with XP Mode in Windows 7 RC on my laptop. At the same time, I have another virtual machine opened, where I’m connected through Citrix client to a remote access machine at work, which is, guess what, just a virtual box running on some access farm.
I know it’s a bit geeky, but wait 3-4 years and you’ll see the same amount of virtualisation in regular people’s lives.
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