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How To Build And Optimize A Virtual Machine Guest

Wednesday, 12 July 2006 by Michel Roth

Nice article by Andrew Dugdell on how to build and optimize a Virtual Machine Guest:

This article is a guideline/reference of items to consider when creating or building a Virtual Machine Guest for use with Microsoft Virtual Server R2 or Virtual PC.

Some notes before you start:

• Guest VMs perform well on an external USB 2 HDD
• Assign as much memory as you can get away with, but the overhead is an addition al 25 Mb per VM
• You can move virtual machines between Virtual PC and Virtual Server with minimal fuss but there are a few gotchas
• You can also move you VMs to run under Virtual PC for Mac
• If you require complicated virtual machine inter-networking see the post complex virtual networks under Virtual PC

Creating an empty Virtual machine shell:

• Create your VM Guest on a separate physical disk to your OS, you can tweak the default location under VirtualPC
• Wherever possible create a VM emulating SCSI Disks.
• Where possible use fixed hard disk sizes for performance
• Make sure you make the Virtual HDD big enough, resizing after its created isn't graceful.

Installing an Operating System:

• Almost any operating system will install that supports this hardware
• If you need to boot from CD-ROM, you have to enable boot from CD-Rom
• There are some install notes for OpenBSD, Novell Netware, Linux and Ubuntu
• There are Windows guides for NT4 ,Vista
• If you choose SCSI disks and install windows use the SCSI Shunt Driver or you install will take forever
• When the OS is installed, make sure you install the 'Virtual Machine Additions' and check they are the latest build.
• Sound will work if the OS has drivers for an ISA Sound Blaster 16
• If you install DOS, you will probably experience a 'black band' when using full-screen with VirtualPC
• Regardless of your OS you can't use dual monitors with a VM, but there is a workaround
• The Virtual NIC supports 100mbit full or half duplex - the default OUI is "00-03-ff".
• If you haven't already done so make sure you install the Virtual Machine additions. There are also additions for Linux and Vista
• Each VM will need to be Patched and have Virus software installed
• You can turn off the host pc speaker from beeping if it annoys you

Read on here.