Microsoft Virtualization Secrets

Virtualizing an Operating System: The “Hello World” of Virtualization

As I described in Chapter 1, my first experience with virtualization was running VMware Workstation on my desktop computer, which enabled me to run many operating system instances on a single physical box. I used this for testing purposes, both for software I wrote and for exploring various configurations for Windows Server and Client that helped me learn and do my job. For many people who have been in the industry for a while, this type of desktop virtualization solution will be familiar. Although this form of machine virtualization was very basic, the principles underlying it still apply to the advanced server virtualization explored throughout this book.

To be clear, note that when I talk about client virtualization in this chapter, unless stated otherwise I am talking about machine virtualization, not other technologies for virtualizing applications and user data that are used on the client operating systems.

Two main components of a virtualization platform are aimed at a client platform. One is the virtualization technology itself that enables the creation of virtual machines and their assets, such as an amount of memory, processor resource allocation, network access, and some virtual storage in the form of a virtual hard drive. The second is the solution’s management interface, which is typically in the form of an application that runs on the client operating system and allows actions such as creating, ...