Virtual PC advices

Hi all,

I am considering using Virtual PC to maintain several versions (4.2, 5.0,
6.0) of Platform Builder on a single computer.
I would like to know how to achieve this the most efficient way.
I am also interested in howtos, caveats, etc. from people who already did
it.

TIA
Remi

ctacke/>
Mon Dec 17 09:45:05 PST 2007

What we've done is to generate a *lot* of hierarchical VPCs with
differencing disks. So what we have is something like this (we actually
have more, but this gives you the general idea):

- XP Base VHD
- Developer Base VHD (common dev tools, like merge, etc)
- Studio 05' base VHD
- PB 6.0 Base VHD
- PB 6.0 with QFEs Base VHD
- Actual PB 6.0 VHD we use for development
- PB 4.2 Base VHD
- PB 4.2 with QFEs Base VHD
- Actual PB 4.2 VHD we use for development
- PB 5.0 Base VHD
- PB 5.0 with QFEs Base VHD
- Actual PB 5.0 VHD we use for development

This allows us to "roll back" to a fresh install of any component on the way
to a build at any time. The important piece is to always create a separate
VHD for any actual work you will perform and mark all of the others as
read-only to prevent messing them up.

You might also look at VMWare (in hind-sight if we didn't have so much time
invested in all the VPCs we already have, we'd likely go that route), as it
allows you to use USB peripherals from the virtual machine - something VPC
sorely lacks.

--

Chris Tacke, eMVP
Join the Embedded Developer Community
http://community.opennetcf.com



"Remi de Gravelaine" <gravelaine at aton dash sys dot fr> wrote in message
news:e8XuFLNQIHA.5184@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hi all,
>
> I am considering using Virtual PC to maintain several versions (4.2, 5.0,
> 6.0) of Platform Builder on a single computer.
> I would like to know how to achieve this the most efficient way.
> I am also interested in howtos, caveats, etc. from people who already did
> it.
>
> TIA
> Remi
>

Remi
Tue Dec 18 00:59:40 PST 2007

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your answer.

Your scheme looks clever, albeit probably a little bit overkill for what I
have to do, id est almost always working at the PB level.
I am not sure I understand correctly the concept of "hierarchical VPC". Does
it just mean that you install Virtual PC in virtual PCs? If so, is there any
drawback or performance penalty?
Do you spawn a new VHD each time there's a QFE? I can't figure out if it is
an expensive operation or no. What is the cost of a differencing disk?

Sorry for so much questions and thanks again.
Remi

ctacke/>
Tue Dec 18 06:21:14 PST 2007

The reason we have so many disks (so a diff disk based of a diff disk based
on a diff disk, etc) is that it allows us fine granularity for creating new
images and what their contents will be. If we need to test something
against PB with no QFEs, it's easy. If we find suspect that a refresh of
Studio caused issues we can test it readily and easily. It also allows us
to build a "fresh" machine with hopefull the exact config we want very
quickly.

When we want to apply new QFEs, we create a new diff disk against the
previous QFE VHD and then a new "usable" machine that uses a diff disk based
off of that.

Yes, it seems complex, but it's the fastest way we've found to bring up new
machines for any given environment. I've not seen any real expense other
than disk space, and I'm not sure a diff disk is any worse than a standard
one. VPC files are inherently huge.


--

Chris Tacke, eMVP
Join the Embedded Developer Community
http://community.opennetcf.com



"Remi de Gravelaine" <gravelaine at aton dash sys dot fr> wrote in message
news:uHbfZRVQIHA.4684@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi Chris,
> Thanks for your answer.
>
> Your scheme looks clever, albeit probably a little bit overkill for what I
> have to do, id est almost always working at the PB level.
> I am not sure I understand correctly the concept of "hierarchical VPC".
> Does it just mean that you install Virtual PC in virtual PCs? If so, is
> there any drawback or performance penalty?
> Do you spawn a new VHD each time there's a QFE? I can't figure out if it
> is an expensive operation or no. What is the cost of a differencing disk?
>
> Sorry for so much questions and thanks again.
> Remi
>

Remi
Tue Dec 18 07:34:16 PST 2007

Thanks again Chris.
About VMWare, the free Player is supposed to be able to run Microsoft's
virtual machines. Did you consider using it or is it impossible in your
configuration?
Remi

ctacke/>
Tue Dec 18 08:08:07 PST 2007

Learn something new every day - I was unaware of the compatibility.

-Chris


"Remi de Gravelaine" <gravelaine at aton dash sys dot fr> wrote in message
news:eJYR5tYQIHA.536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Thanks again Chris.
> About VMWare, the free Player is supposed to be able to run Microsoft's
> virtual machines. Did you consider using it or is it impossible in your
> configuration?
> Remi
>

Remi
Thu Dec 20 01:52:45 PST 2007

Hi Chris,

> Learn something new every day

Me too, that's why I still love this occupation :-)

> I was unaware of the compatibility.

It appears that there are some kind of standards in this area (look at
http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/ and more specifically the Open Virtual
Machine format) and that even MS somehow complies with these standards.

One of my questioning is about OS licencing. If I create a couple of Virtual
Hard Disks (one to run PB 4.2 and the other to run PB 5.0), does it
implicate that I have to create a couple of Virtual PCs and thus pay for a
couple of OS licences, knowing that the host and the two guests will run the
same (or almost the same) XP Pro? This would be a real pain in the ass as
all this stuff is only a workaround to have 3 PB versions running
side-by-side on the same machine, MS having been unable to address this
problem.

Remi

Dean
Thu Dec 20 06:01:40 PST 2007

I'm no expert, but I think the general rational is that having a Virtual PC
is equivalent to having a real PC as far as licensing is concerned. That
would mean yes, applications/OSes installed on virtual PCs would need their
own license.

Maybe if you're using differencing disks you get around this by only having
one virtual PC, but it is configured differently depending on the
differencing disk you use? I've never used virtualization at all and thus
haven't looked at license issues or capabilities of the VM...

--
Dean Ramsier - eMVP
BSQUARE Corporation


"Remi de Gravelaine" <gravelaine at aton dash sys dot fr> wrote in message
news:uL7cX4uQIHA.4400@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi Chris,
>
>> Learn something new every day
>
> Me too, that's why I still love this occupation :-)
>
>> I was unaware of the compatibility.
>
> It appears that there are some kind of standards in this area (look at
> http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/ and more specifically the Open Virtual
> Machine format) and that even MS somehow complies with these standards.
>
> One of my questioning is about OS licencing. If I create a couple of
> Virtual Hard Disks (one to run PB 4.2 and the other to run PB 5.0), does
> it implicate that I have to create a couple of Virtual PCs and thus pay
> for a couple of OS licences, knowing that the host and the two guests will
> run the same (or almost the same) XP Pro? This would be a real pain in the
> ass as all this stuff is only a workaround to have 3 PB versions running
> side-by-side on the same machine, MS having been unable to address this
> problem.
>
> Remi
>
>

ctacke/>
Thu Dec 20 06:52:54 PST 2007

That's the beauty of basing all VPC images off of the single root core OS
VHD with differencing disks. You use and need only one OS license key. If
you did a ground-up build for each version of PB, you'd need an OS license
for each. Diff disks allow you to "reconfigure" the same "PC" for each use.


--

Chris Tacke, eMVP
Join the Embedded Developer Community
http://community.opennetcf.com



"Remi de Gravelaine" <gravelaine at aton dash sys dot fr> wrote in message
news:uL7cX4uQIHA.4400@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi Chris,
>
>> Learn something new every day
>
> Me too, that's why I still love this occupation :-)
>
>> I was unaware of the compatibility.
>
> It appears that there are some kind of standards in this area (look at
> http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/ and more specifically the Open Virtual
> Machine format) and that even MS somehow complies with these standards.
>
> One of my questioning is about OS licencing. If I create a couple of
> Virtual Hard Disks (one to run PB 4.2 and the other to run PB 5.0), does
> it implicate that I have to create a couple of Virtual PCs and thus pay
> for a couple of OS licences, knowing that the host and the two guests will
> run the same (or almost the same) XP Pro? This would be a real pain in the
> ass as all this stuff is only a workaround to have 3 PB versions running
> side-by-side on the same machine, MS having been unable to address this
> problem.
>
> Remi
>
>

Remi
Thu Dec 20 07:59:30 PST 2007

Dean, Chris,
Thanks for your advices.

Of course, I did not try Virtual PC yet, and I don't know what can be done
with a differencing disk, except for what Chris wrote here. I am expecting a
brand new machine powerfull enough to run PB 6 efficiently (let's hope for
the best) and if I can select a "disk context" as easilly as Chris said with
no performance penalty and no extra licencing fee, yes, it's great news!

Remi