The USB not in Hyper-V thing is annoying. It actually made me stop and consider my alternatives for a desktop. I have 8GB and want to use it, so I'm going 64-bit. The question is which OS. As I see it, I have a few choices:
I've given each of these some thoughts below.
In looking over these alternatives, I'll discard Windows XP 64. I want to move forward, and this appears to be a flaky 64-bit, early alternative OS. Missing drivers, various issues, and it's old. I'll need to leave it soon, drivers aren't being written for it, etc.
I run Vista Ultimate on my laptop, and while it's OK, it's a pig, and overall I think it's a small POS. Not a big, honking, steaming, pile, but a small one. I don't like it, what little I've seen of Windows 7 makes me think it's better, and so this is my last choice. Actually after going back to XP. I still have a 5GB file on my Vista laptop I can't delete. It "calculates" for at least 20 minutes before I give up.
W2K8 is my current choice. It's installed and I'm partially into driver set up. However the Hyper-V not supporting USB makes me question Hyper-V. And if I'm not using Hyper-V, why use Windows server? Win 7 starts to make sense (or Linux).
Windows 7 is interesting. I hear wonderful things about it, from a number of people that have just moved to it as their primary OS. It's not often that beta software from MS is baked. SQL 7 was, a few others, and this seems like it's there. I just get this guy feeling from the people I know running it and I am very, very tempted to do this. Once I have a desktop, this will likely go on my laptop, so I'll have a consistent environment.
There is some concern about the upgrade to RTM, but a few people have moved from the beta to RC using the Windows Easy Transfer, which gives me confidence in moving later.
Joe Webb, a fellow SQL Server MVP, runs Ubuntu on his laptop. I saw this last year at a conference and was intrigued by it. He loves it, and it's cool looking. He seems very productive and that's a priority for me. He doesn't appear to have to mess with it a lot from my talks with him, and that's what I want as a host OS. Something that just works.
On my laptop, I think I'd just go with Joe's setup and VMWare. However on my desktop the issue is that I run 3 monitors and I'd like to continue doing that. In a few searches, numerous people have had issues getting multiple monitors working on Linux and they jump through some hoops. I haven't found anyone running 3 or 4 monitors, and I don't want to be the guinea pig on this one. The last thing I need is to document a 3 monitor setup on Ubuntu and have all the Linux kids emailing me with questions.
The more I think about this one, the more I am thinking that either VMWare or Virtual Server is the best choice. Why? One of the things I've done, and would like to continue to do, is move a VM from my desktop to my laptop as needed, usually on some USB drive. This sounds like I can't necessarily move them around. This blog post says also that Virtual Server doesn't support 64-bit images.
If that's the case, then it seems like VMWare is my best option. I get one free license for being an MVP. I am happy to buy a 2nd if that works for me. The alternative is to not move VMs around.
That's a consideration, especially as I don't do it a lot, and potentially I could set up some other way to do this.
The 64-bit thing is definitely something I want since I get 64-bit stuff to test at times, and I'm sure I'll get more as time goes on. So I want to be sure that I am Hyper-V or VMware.
What do I do? I'm really not sure. I think that Ubuntu, Vista, and XP are out. So do I go with Win 7 as a workstation or W2K8? I think for now I'll go with Hyper-V and W2K8 since it's already installed and it's not any worse than Win 7 in my mind. The USB thing I can deal with, and worse case, since my stuff is backed up with LiveMesh (which works with Windows 7), I can easily rebuild and move things if needed.
I noted recently that I purchased a new desktop with the intention of moving to Windows 2008 and Hyper-V. That arrived, and I've been working on setting it up.
It's been great and got me wondering if I could do the same thing on my laptop? After all, I bought a 2GB RAM upgrade for it last year, taking it from 2GB to 4GB, but my 32-bit Vista Ultimate install doesn't see it. At the time I was assuming that the desktop OSes (XP, Vista) would function like the server ones and use up to 4GB. After all, that's what's addressable by 32-bit processors.
However, in their limited wisdom, Microsoft didn't do something right and so my XP desktop saw only 2GB and the Vista one got to 3GB.
So I did some searching, and while there are lots of utilities, like the CPU-Z one from CPUID.com, it doesn't just say "32bit" or "64-bit" on it. I finally found specs at Intel for my Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU, which said it supported the Intel VT technology. Then I found the blog at Accentient that mentioned he had the same CPU in a DELL laptop and put W2K8 on it.
Apparently there are quite a few people trying W2K8 on their desktop, and even a blog at http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ dedicated to helping you do this.
There's discussion of application compatibility, which is key. I use ULead VideoStudio, but it's listed as no issues on this page.
So as I get through converting my desktop over completely I'll be looking to convert the laptop as well. Hopefully I'll have this working by PASS and everyone can see how it works.
I have a new machine, albeit one with a bad video card, running Windows 2008 Server R2 with Hyper-V. My plan was to use this as my workstation and run Hyper-V for various things, SQL Server, Visual Studio, as a browsing desktop, etc.
I wrote recently about finding a few blogs that convinced me this might work when looking for a new workstation. I decided to put together a few other links that contain information about using Windows 2008 in that mode.
This blog (Using Windows 2008 as a Super Workstation) is from someone at MSDN, and has some good hints. I still need to update drivers, and I am moving one video card from my old machine to the new one while waiting on a replacement from the vendor.
I also found this site: http://www.win2008workstation.com. It's a blog with lots of information to make your W2K8 server run smoother as a workstation.
And one more: How to convert your Windows Server 2008...
Most of this info is from IT guys that are doing development. So they are looking for high performance, VM capabilities for separation of issues, and general work, work.
HOWEVER, I haven't seen a lot from people on using some of the workstation like things like cameras, iPods, ec. I did verify there is a 64 bit version of iTunes, which I had planned to drop in a VM.
However as I've been reading more about setting up Hyper-V, I found this wonderful note that VMs in Hyper-V don't support USB peripherals. I've seen lots of blogs, like this one, that talk about a USB over IP, and I might go to that, but for now I might run iTunes in the host and keep other stuff in VMs.
I think this is a huge mistake by Microsoft. I know lots of Hyper-V is for servers, but there are plenty of people that will want to put this on desktops, AKA developers, and they like gadgets. Part of the purpose of a VM is to separate out things that might interrupt your work, like gadgets.
I'm hoping that MS will fix this, but for now it has me second guessing W2K8 as a desktop.
A great Hyper-V blog here at Accentient Blog.
I was searching around for information on setting up Hyper-V and I ran across this blog, which has some great instructions for getting started. Including a 3 part series on Using 64-bit Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation OS, which is exactly what I want to do. The parts are:
I recently purchased a new machine with the intention of going this route. My old machine was an AMD 64-bit one, but it couldn't take more than 4GB, and I was fed up with slowness in VMs.
So far I've used some of the hints in this blog to get started, installing W2K8 and Hyper-V.
I installed Hyper-V onto a new machine as a role for the base Windows 2008 server role. It required a reboot, and once it was back up, I went to create my first virtual machine. The Hyper-V manager was confusing for a few seconds since it wants to connect to a Hyper-V machine. Since I hadn’t set any VMs up, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Then I realized I needed to “connect” to my host machine, and so I did that. All of a sudden I got the “New” menu item I expected. I clicked it, went through the settings of picking a name, memory, a disk, etc. for my VM. Then I got to the Installation Options screen, and I got a pleasant surprise.
I’d already put the Windows 7 disk in my DVD reader, but this was cool. I could alternatively use an ISO file. Not that this is hard to do in Windows, but it’s nice that this is build into the Hyper-V console automatically. I could even use a network installation.
Nice time saver!
Or at least I’m getting ready to take the plunge into using Hyper-V. In my machine dilemma, I decided to look at new machines. My first stop, as usual, was Dell. They have a lot of choices, but in terms of desktops, I struggled to find a good machine that would by 64-bit, run Hyper-V and not cost and arm and a leg. Actually my first step was trying to find something to run 8GB of RAM, and there were few choices there.
I went to the Hyper-V and Windows 2008 sites, but it wasn’t completely clear what specs I needed in hardware. They mention hardware virtualization support and trusted execution stuff, but putting this together in terms of the choices out there for CPUs isn’t easy. I wish it were as simple as a Pentium I, Pentium II, etc. Instead there are multiple flavors of dual and quad cores, various AMD chips, etc. Sempron, Xeon, Athlon, Phenom, Q8200, Q6600, it’s nuts.
I quickly decided this was a bad idea. I checked the C|Net Reviews, but they are mainly for people wanting to run Vista, and they don’t have a lot of info to help me. I wanted to wipe a machine, get Hyper-V installed and then do what I want. It seemed in the mainstream world there was a Dell deal for about $900 that had 6GB of RAM and a 64-bit CPU as well as a Gateway that had 8GB for about $800. However I wasn’t sure any of these would run Windows Server 2008. I priced out an HP that might have worked, but it was also up in the $1000 range.
I posted a note on Twitter as well and got a few recommendations, but most of them were “build your own” and that didn’t appeal to me. It’s not worth saving $200 or more if I have to spend hours trying to mix and match the proper components. I found a few more builders online, but none of them wanted to sell me a good systems, but without lots of bells and whistles.
In some searching around for information about the various CPUs I could get, I stumbled on ecollegepc from somewhere. They looked like a reasonable builder, and while they’re not local, they just attracted me as a nice, easy to use site.
I believe in instincts and they struck me as a good place to shop, so I checked out and priced a basic 8GB quad core. No keyboard, no mouse, no speakers, no OS, just a machine. It came in around $700.
Since I wasn’t sure what I needed, and what would match, I emailed them, telling them this story:
“I'm looking to replace my desktop and your company was recommended to me. I haven't purchased a desktop in quite a few years, but here are some things I'm looking to do and was looking for some advice.”
I was pleasantly surprised to get an email back in less than an hour, telling me that I would want to use the Q6600 Quad core, not any of the others, and a Gigabyte motherboard. I had a few more questions, including moving my current nVidia display adapter over and ended up exchanging 3 or 4 emails with their tech. Or maybe the owner, not sure who it was, but he was helpful, and quick to respond.
The whole process and advice just felt good and so I placed an order. I got:
I also got a fancy LED lit case that will impress the kids. It might annoy me enough to put a something over it, but for now it will be in the desk.
Once it comes, I’ll move stuff over to it and then install Windows Home Server on my existing Dimension E521. It’s a 64-bit desktop with AMD chips that should run that fine. I have 2 SATA drives in there and might add another to give me most space for backups.
