Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

I've been a huge fan of running virtual machine since James introduced me to VMWare a couple of years ago, not only for running Linux distributions (usually Ubuntu) for trying stuff out, but also for testing installations in an easily recoverable 'Clean' environment where I would:

1. Create a Virtual Machine of the OS (Always XP, but could be any OS), ensure all the patches for this OS are applied.
2. Zip up the virtual machine image files and store them in a safe place.
3. Run all the tests etc. inside the VM we just created.

Then when you want to repeat the tests from scratch, it's simply a matter of unzipping the virtual machine image files over the top of the existing files and you're back to a clean machine next time you restart.

I know VMWare would allow you to do things like saving the virtual machine state at a moment in time so that this may not be necessary, but this was an approach I trusted 100% and which worked well for me on several occasions. Best of all you could zip or copy the VM image files at any time to save the machine in various states, allowing quicker testing from different start points or even running multiple simultaneous copies of identical virtual machines.

Recently I wanted to test a deployment against a clean XP machine for work. My immediate response was to download the latest version of VMWare Server and install this, however after the download stage I remembered that whilst installing "XP Mode" on my home PC I had noticed that the underlying Virtual Machine software, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, was also able to run on windows XP (and all versions of Vista and Win7, not just the top editions), so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm pleased to report it all just works, with no particular jumping through hoops. There is a Microsoft version of VMWare Tools (although I don't know if there will be a Linux compatible install yet) allowing such things as dragging of files from the host machine to the virtual machine, shared clipboard, and will even dynamically resize the screen resolution when running in a windowed mode, which is all highly useful.

It's all very slick, and allows the machine image files to be manipulated in a slightly easier way then VMWare (where you'd need to manually edit the files to rename them, with this you justload it up, it fails, you point it to the new file and it works).

And whilst it has some things I'd see as an advantage over VMWare such as not installing those nasty network drivers, it does only seem to allow the use of one processor (core) on the virtual machine, although I'm still investigating this.

Overall, Virtual PC feels more integrated than the VMWare equivalents, but somehow the simplicity makes it feel a little less configurable, but I'm still invetigating. Either way it looks like it could be a good choice for getting into running virtual machines. I'll post more if I find anything, either good or bad, worth noting.