As for running VMs as a service in the background, then I would suggest VMWare Server 2.0. I initially thought that version 2.0 was a complete and utter failure using the web interface, however people soon learned you can use the Vsphere/ESXi client to connect to Server v2. If you are then using the Vsphere client you can then shut down the internal webserver that VMWare runs to manage the VMs and it really has a decent memory footprint. Here is a link to some instructions on using the VSphere client: http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/accessing-vmware-server-2-with-vsphere-client-the-unsupported-way.html I have a machine that was non ESXi compliant, so I had to use Windows 2003 as the host. Stripped down to only necessary services I could easily run 2x Windows 2003 AD servers and one Linux VM under version 2.0. All are set to automatic load upon windows start, so if the machine is shut down it just takes a couple of minutes longer to load everything up. Other than that it works flawlessly. I might add, if you are looking at running ESXi, do ignore the VMWare Hardware Comparability list. There are really only two things you need to run ESXi either 3.5 or 4. That is a compliant NIC and storage adapter. You can install 3.5 on IDE drives, but need SCSI to create a datastore. Both ESXi 3.5 and 4.0 can be run off of a USB flash drive, in fact that is what we run our ESXi servers on. I have a test machine that is a HP d530 desktop that runs 3.5 that uses an old Adapatec 2940 card, which are a dime a dozen now. At Saturday, 18-12-2010 on 14:05 Wayne Johnson wrote: Yea, that would be a good way to describe it. I develop network applications that run on different OS. At one time I might be running a server on Centos, Active Directory on WS2k3, and a client on XP. The AD machine I would just bring up and run in the background unless I need to make some user property changes, same with the server. Now, I just wish I could find an AIX/PowerPC and Solaris/SPARC VM system. --- Wayne Johnson, | There are two kinds of people: Those 3943 Penn Ave. N. | who say to God, "Thy will be done," Minneapolis, MN 55412-1908 | and those to whom God says, "All right, (612) 522-7003 | then, have it your way." --C.S. Lewis ------------------------- FROM: Robert Nesius TO: TCLUG Mailing List SENT: Fri, December 17, 2010 12:47:48 PM SUBJECT: Re: [tclug-list] Running linux from a Windows VM On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Wayne Johnson wrote: I looked at VirtualBox, but wasn't too impressed. The install forced all my NIC to disconnect (expected, but still a nuisance). No provision to run services in the background (that I found). Are you talking about running virtual machines as services? Not sure what exactly you meant.... -Rob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20101218/2c030a5f/attachment.htm