MacIntel: Managing Windows based Virtual Machines

Last week someone asked me about the feasibility of managing Windows based virtual machines (VMs) that can be launched from Intel-based Apple hardware. I thought about possibilities for a few minutes then a flush of ideas started to swirl around my head. Management of computers in a cross platform environment can sometimes be a challenging a matter, but if you already have the infrastructure in place to manage Windows client machines then the aforementioned is not a terribly difficult task to accomplish.

Managing Windows based VMs that are currently running on Apple hardware is not much different from managing those that reside on PC hardware or even physical machines that run Windows XP. The goal is the same, but the steps involved with keeping the VMs up to date might differ just a bit. In the next few days I will post systematic ways of doing so without hurting your budget; that is, keeping your total cost of ownership to a minimum.

The type of people who are interested in doing the above are people who have to manage users and computers in a multi-platform environment. The solutions that I propose here are just simple ideas that might lead to more system administrator friendly solutions. Keep in mind that you must not only periodically update the OS, but also regularly update additional software that has been installed within the VM.

Method I: Shared Resource
Run the virtual machines over the network so that you do not needlessly eat away the users memory resources to accomplish the task at hand. As long as the host computer (Administrator workstation) is a beefy system that is hooked up to a fast internet connection, then you can simply turn on the VM by accessing their VM configuration files over the network. On Windows based PCs you can use the command prompt to open multiple virtual machines at once assuming you have VMware Workstation 5.5+ installed on your administrator computer and your hardware specifications are extremely good.

Cons: Network latency may be a problem. User must be aware that you need to perform system updates to their VMs. Otherwise, they may inadvertently interrupt the process. Moreover, the remote computer must also be on the network with high speed internet access.

Method II: Remote Desktop Connection
Use a software application on the system to turn on the virtual machine then perform updates for the user.

Method III: Physical access to the computer
Perform manual updates. Assign someone the responsibility to make an appointment with the users on an agreed upon timetable.

Cons: You must periodically visit your users computer and update them. Efficiency is a factor.

Method IV: Training
Encourage users to store their data on their host system. After they are done modifying their data within the virtual Windows environment they can save the files in their profile on the host computer. Now, you can deliver up to date virtual configuration files to your users when they need to have their VMs up to date.

Method V: Boot Camp and Parallels
By utilizing Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for Mac, from Apple and Parallels, respectively, you can install Windows XP (SP2) on a separate partition and allow your Intel Mac to startup from your Windows partition. Allowing your Mac to boot from the Windows partition in a corporate environment will allow System Administrators to treat the system as regular PC. They can then easily manage your partition just like the rest of your Windows based computers. Your users can then choose to boot their system into the partition of their choice, Windows or Mac OS X. If they select Mac OS X, then they can have the best of both worlds. With the latest version of virtualization software from Parallels, currently at Release Candidate 2 (RC2), you can directly access your boot camp partition. This allows your users to run both operating systems simultaneously.

Method VI: Compression
If you decide to create a virtual disk and then deploy the virtual machine configuration files to your users, then you can easily keep them up to date. All you have to do is keep the size of the virtual hard disk drive to a minimum. Furthermore, you can reduce the size of the files even more by compressing the VM configuration files utilizing some utility such as WinZip or WinRAR and then creating a self-extracting executable.