Virtualization

I own a small structural engineering consulting firm. We do a lot of CAD work and structural analysis. My CAD software is old (AutoCad 2000) but it’s working fine for us now (running Windows XP Pro 32 bit). We also use the RISA suite of structural analysis software and keep that up to date. I am also an amateur videographer, using the Adobe Creative Suite CS4 (includes After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Flash, etc.). I’d like to build a new PC, very similar to this. It’s a 64-bit system with an Intel i7 processor. I’m also looking at using a 64-bit Vista ...

I’m an IT Manager in a medium-size special education center. I am running a shop with 100-plus VMs running on Windows Server 2008 virtualization hosts. How do I minimize time/resources/disruption, while migrating to Windows Server 2008 R2? As per Microsoft recommended best practices, all the VHDs are a fixed size, and each VHD file is on its own individual LUN. Even though some of the VHDs are stored in mirroring capable hardware, I don’t see any alternative to doing a file copy of the VHDs, because I want to deploy multiple VMs on a single Clustered Shared Volume (LUN). The file copies ...

I am an admin in a large virtualization shop. I have friends working in a virtualization hosting provider who have the same question as I do. The idea is to have a mix of VMs on each virtualization host that are a good mix of I/O intensive applications and CPU bound applications. Is it a good idea to host two Exchange VMs on a single physical host? Or is it better to mix an Exchange VM with a SQL host? Should I instead mix seven desktop VDI VMs with a single Exchange VM? I am looking for recommendations and best practices that advise ...

I represent a small business, with a single computer running Ubuntu and several virtual machines. I have set up a virtual machine on my Ubuntu box running WinXP, and joined it to my domain. Sadly, I only allotted 6GB of space for the image, and now I am running out of space. Is there a way to resize the disk image that wouldn't take longer than simply reinstalling the OS in a new virtual machine?

I am IT manager in large insurance company, and we are preparing to adopt Windows Server 2008 R2. As per recommended best practices, here is what I would be doing: 1. Build a, say, 50GB fixed size VHD with Windows Server 2008 R2 installed inside. Let’s assume I have 45GB free space left. I declare this to be a master VM and check it into System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM) and I have a 50GB file copy. 2. I check out the master VM and get another 50GB file copy. I wait for the file copy to complete, including presumably ...