Virtual XP delivered - part 2

Today I got my VMWare Server XP install copied to a USB drive. I don't have a 4GB thumb drive kicking around although you can certainly pick one up for around $100 now (amazing!) so I used a regular USB external hard drive. It took me two goes because I didn't figure out the first time that for true portability I should figure this VM image may get used in a non-Linux system so I should use a file system format for the USB drive that is compatible across both - which basically means FAT32.

So now I have my Windows XP VM sitting on a USB drive and I plug it into another computer and use VMWare Server on that machine to open it up. Does it work? Hell yeah! Well it should of course - that's exactly what VMWare have based their business on, but you know the first time I try it and it works I have to say I was impressed. The only thing that didn't quite work was my VM includes a CD drive and it references a physical device /dev/something and that doesn't exist on a PC - its D: there of course. So I just added another CD ROM for D: so now which ever virtual device matches the physical host machine it is in just works. The ethernet, virtual disk and sound devices don't seem to have this problem.

Other things I tried today - I loaded up ActiveSync and on the Linux box connected my Windows Mobile PDA. After activating the appropriate virtual USB device the virtual machine was able to sync just fine. I also did some double checking with Napster and Windows Genuine Advantage to make sure they didn't freak out when I moved the virtual machine between hosts. I'm happy to report that they had no problems at all and I was able to play Napster DRMed music on both two different machines, and that Windows Genuine Advantage ActiveX controlled said my virtual PC was okay no matter where it physically resided. This is all good news.

The only slight problem I've had so far is that on Linux I haven't yet managed to get Linux audio and Windows audio on the VM working at the same time. Its one or the other or you get a device busy error. This is not a problem on Windows and I strongly suspect there is a way around it except that I haven't yet got my head around how Linux audio works.

At this point I'm about ready to drop $100 and get my 4GB USB drive. If I do this I still have a niggling doubt about what happens if I'm running a VM and I remove the USB drive from under it - will the virtual machine be screwed for life? Is this a good opportunity to use VM snapshots every time I fire up the VM so that at worst I lose what changed since I started it? Indeed using a VM snapshot may turn out to be the best way to manage backups of the VM from outside - since most of the data wont change much it'll greatly reduce how much needs to be copied to do a full backup. Or the backup could run from within the VM using traditional rsync or synctoy technology. That may be best because it would be easier to automate and avoids the problem of figuring out when the VM is running or not and having to shut it down while backups of the VM image run.

Having done all this groovy stuff today (really its no rocket science and I'm far from pioneering here) my business partner is pretty excited. The one thing he wants to see is the VMWare Server install on the same USB key as the VM image. That's no problem, its not that huge, but the install does need admin privileges and throws a bunch of drivers onto the host machine. That's pretty intrusive and a shame - if PCs and Linx all had VMWare or even better some standard open source VM technology builtin that wouldn't matter. Then again maybe that is where VMware is trying to position itself. Ideally you'd be able to walk up to ANY Intel PC, slap in your USB drive and have the OS recognize your VM and fire it up. On the machines that I own right now I can easily arrange for that to be the case, but walking into a friends house or an Internet Cafe arrangement that's a harder step to take. There is probably an intermediate solution - maybe like the Bulldog thumb computer system, but I don't think we are quite there yet.

However in my mind the main thing about this whole experiment has been proven - I can effectively ditch Windows on all my machines and buy one single license for a virtual machine. I can then carry that virtual machine around with me and it'll take care of running all the Windows specific code I'm still tied to - Napster for playing WM DRM files, Quicken for finance, Outlook and ActiveSync for backing up my Windows Mobile device and the occasional Windows specific active X stuff that I can't get working with IE4Linux.