Building a new pc to run a c drive image

tonys920

tonys920

tonys920

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11 Nov 2009
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Is it possible to build a pc that will run an image of my main pc. i.e I have my main pc with all my progs installed and up to date and working fine. I want to build a second pc that I can use for 3d and video rendering etc when my main pc is tied up rendering.

What would be the best way to set this up ? virtual box ?

Does the new pc have to have the same specs e.g. motherboard etc. will it have to have the same amount of ram or could it have more ?

Will it running the virtual machine will it use all the memory and cores available

Would I have to keep it off the internet so that there is no licence checks that would trip it up.

Thanks for any advice
 
What you suggest is possible, but does have some issues.

Totally disregarding being naughty about licensing issues, you could create a VM using Sysinternals P2V tool. This would be able to be run on another PC with all the RAM and CPU available minus the overheads on the Hypervisor.

However, I would suggest you may still get performance issues due to most hypervisors limited ability to bridge to the GPU and therefore graphics performance would be impacted. This may be enough of an issue to render the whole idea pointless.
 
If you're building a second machine, just use a cloning utility to re-create your system drive and install it or re-install from your original media.

You will need a new windows license. Autodesk have a license borrowing utility for 3D Studio that will let you share a single copy across a network, but you can only use one at a time, except for network rendering using backburner or mentalray distributed rendering, which you can install on all your machines, if you're just looking to speed things up. I'm not sure about Adobe licensing, but I think you can install creative suite on a couple of machines sharing an IP address, but you can only run one instance at a time, you'd need to check the EULA.

I use several machines a across a network and use mentalray distributed rendering to cut down render times, but I tend to keep a machine free for web surfing etc when I have an animation going, and just flick between machines with a KVM switch. (dual screen KVM will set you back about £200)

There is no point in using a virtual machine for rendering software, as most render engines are multi threaded and will use all of the available resources, 3D studio MAX makes Prime look like a web browser for resource use.

The thing with 3D rendering is a computer costs pennies compared to the software, so you may as well get a few to get the most out of your investment. An EVGA SR2 based system costs less than a 3D studio MAX license.
 
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