Virtualization question

Five_Star · 20 Mar 2009 at 07:56

On a virtualised system the system is arranged in layers as below, hardware, VM software, VM guests, applications.

Applications
VM guests
VM software
Hardware

When the hardware is booted up you usually get access to a simple interface provided by the VM software. This software has direct access to the physical hardware on the machine. The VM guest machines must be controlled via remote desktop or other VM access system.

Is it possible to have one of the VM guest machines gain access to the physical hardware so that when the machine and VMs start up somebody could work at the machine locally on one of the VM guest as if it was on the physical hardware in front of them?

Five_Star · 20 Mar 2009 at 08:59

Thanks for the quick reply. I've (we've) never used VMware, only Microsoft Hyper-V and I know that I can't do what I want with that.

It's a shame because we have an ideal place to use a VM server to display presentations on a LCD and we have nowhere to place another PC to power the presentations but the server is behind a partition wall so it's easy to run the monitor cable to the screen and wanted to start a 'default' VM guest to run the presentations.

I wonder if it will ever be possible?

Five_Star · 20 Mar 2009 at 10:02

We use Microsoft Hyper-V already and the point that mdjmcnally made is probably the way we'll be going. We want to demo some full HD video on a loop which I wanted to do on a vista x64 machine due to the well supported video tools. I guess I'll have to investigate if this can be done on Server 2008 x64. I have already tested HD video over remote desktop and it can get pretty choppy.

I was hoping that as a well established virtualization provider, VMware would have to allow us to do what we wanted without the outlay on other hardware while still using a bare metal hyper visor and allowing a virtual Vista x64 to get full access to the hardware video card.

Five_Star · 20 Mar 2009 at 13:11

I've been looking at some cheap systems at lunch to run these demo videos on, having a look at where we are with servers and the current setup I think for £285 it's safer not to mess with our current VM setup.

Cheers