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Living in a Virtual World

By Douglas Chick
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Living in a Virtual World Greg Bromage

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been having some fun with Microsoft Virtual PC. 

It's not a new concept by any means, and there are a couple of products around that do the same job, but this is the first time I've had the chance to play.. err.. research them. It has a lot of good and bad points (being resource hungry is one of the main drawbacks). 

So, anyway, I set it up on my workstation and installed a copy of Windows 2000 Server on it. So far, so good. I now have a "virtual server" on my workstation that I can use as a test-bed and development machine. 

But, as I said, it was a bit slow due to limited system resources, so I decided to move the files on to one of my friend's servers. Result: Virtual server on a real server.

As part of a new project my friend is working on, he's got a small scale SAN, and that's where I put the virtual hard disk files. Result: Virtual server on real server on virtual hard disk.

So now I'm thinking. "How far can I take this?" 

So I installed another Virtual PC on my workstation, but with the virtual hard disk one of my Linux/Samba servers, then installed Windows 2000 Professional on it. Current status: Virtual MS client hosted on faked MS Server running on real Linux server logged in to Virtual server on real server's virtual hard disk.

Now came time to install the VPN software. You can guess what's coming next: Virtual MS client on fake MS server on real Linux server logged in across Virtual Private Network to Virtual server on real server's virtual hard disk.

By this time, my workstation (and network) was getting slower and slower. The obvious solution was thin-client technology, so Terminal Services was enabled on the Virtual Server. At the same time, I installed IIS and put installed some virtual web servers, just for the hell of it.

I know have a Virtual MS client on fake MS server on real Linux server logged in to a virtual terminal session running on Virtual server (across Virtual Private Network) on real server's virtual hard disk, so that I can use my web browser in the virtual terminal to browse a virtual website. I'm thinking of enabling VLAN support on my switches to help manage the traffic. 

By the end of the month, I expect I'll have the entire Internet running on one machine in my garage. If you can think of any other virtualisations I can make, please let me know.