Want to run WHS inside Win7 ProVM -- Will it work?

I hear a lot of good things about Windows Home Server, and have d/l the trial
and the Power Pack 3 Beta. I would like to see full functionality and
auto-starting if the host O/S is Win7 and WHS runs on a VM, and would this be
advisable? I plan to dedicate a machine if I like it and buy it, but would
putting it in a VM have any disadvantages? How much machine will I need? I
still want to use Win7 for everyday tasks.

Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (single core)
2GB RAM
Nvidia 6950gt (265M)
Win 7 Pro

No, it's not a supported scenario, and it wouldn't be a satisfactory
experience. WHS works best with a large, dedicated disk or set of disks. It
doesn't require a high powered CPU or a lot of RAM - an Atom processor and
1-2 GB is fine. But it isn't supported in a VM.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel




"G. Morgan" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I hear a lot of good things about Windows Home Server, and have d/l the
>trial
> and the Power Pack 3 Beta. I would like to see full functionality and
> auto-starting if the host O/S is Win7 and WHS runs on a VM, and would this
> be
> advisable? I plan to dedicate a machine if I like it and buy it, but
> would
> putting it in a VM have any disadvantages? How much machine will I need?
> I
> still want to use Win7 for everyday tasks.
>
> Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (single core)
> 2GB RAM
> Nvidia 6950gt (265M)
> Win 7 Pro
>
>

Install it and try it out. At least you can get familiar with it.
The limitations you will have are the hard drive sizes you can use, 127 GB
max, and only 3 of them.
Without hardware supported virtualization which your processor probably
doesn't have, the experience will not be as good as a dedicated machine.
I have been trying it out in Hyper-V where I am using pass through disks
which allows you to use a hard drive as a drive in the virtual machine
instead of a .vhd file.
The hard drive limitation in Hyper-V is 2 TB.

I am looking forward to trying out Power Pack 3 as soon as it becomes
available. I didn't get a chance to try out the beta.

"G. Morgan" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I hear a lot of good things about Windows Home Server, and have d/l the
> trial
> and the Power Pack 3 Beta. I would like to see full functionality and
> auto-starting if the host O/S is Win7 and WHS runs on a VM, and would this
> be
> advisable? I plan to dedicate a machine if I like it and buy it, but
> would
> putting it in a VM have any disadvantages? How much machine will I need?
> I
> still want to use Win7 for everyday tasks.
>
> Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (single core)
> 2GB RAM
> Nvidia 6950gt (265M)
> Win 7 Pro
>
>

Gary Mount wrote:
> Install it and try it out. At least you can get familiar with it.
> The limitations you will have are the hard drive sizes you can use, 127
> GB max, and only 3 of them.
> Without hardware supported virtualization which your processor probably
> doesn't have, the experience will not be as good as a dedicated machine.
> I have been trying it out in Hyper-V where I am using pass through disks
> which allows you to use a hard drive as a drive in the virtual machine
> instead of a .vhd file.
> The hard drive limitation in Hyper-V is 2 TB.

If you run your WHS under Virtual Server you can use SCSI virtual hard drives,
which do not have the 127 GB limitation.

Virtual Server is not supported on Windows 7 (will not install, even), but there
are ways to make it work.

--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP

On Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:03:16 -0600, G. Morgan <> wrote:

>I hear a lot of good things about Windows Home Server, and have d/l the trial
>and the Power Pack 3 Beta. I would like to see full functionality and
>auto-starting if the host O/S is Win7 and WHS runs on a VM, and would this be
>advisable? I plan to dedicate a machine if I like it and buy it, but would
>putting it in a VM have any disadvantages? How much machine will I need? I
>still want to use Win7 for everyday tasks.


Thanks for the replies everyone. It looks like a bad idea.

I think I'll just dual boot Win7 from it's own 250GB drive, and give it a
partition for WHS to use (backup's and shares) when WHS boots to a 1.5 TB
drive. I just use the boot menu in my BIOS to keep it simple.

G. Morgan wrote:
> Thanks for the replies everyone. It looks like a bad idea.
>
> I think I'll just dual boot Win7 from it's own 250GB drive, and give it a
> partition for WHS to use (backup's and shares) when WHS boots to a 1.5 TB
> drive. I just use the boot menu in my BIOS to keep it simple.

How is that going to work? Don't you want/need your WHS to be running all the
time (or at least when your Windows 7 install is running)?

Personally I think it is a big mistake for MS not to support WHS in a virtual
environment. It's based on server 2003 which *is* supported as a guest.

I also think it is a mistake not to support Virtual Server on a Windows 7 host.

Actually, both these scenarios very likely work. But if getting Virtual Server
to run on Windows 7 is too much of a pain (it really is a pain), there is always
the free VMWare Server.

--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:07:45 -0500, David Wilkinson <no->
wrote:

>How is that going to work? Don't you want/need your WHS to be running all the
>time (or at least when your Windows 7 install is running)?

Ideally, yes. That's what I wanted to do.


>Personally I think it is a big mistake for MS not to support WHS in a virtual
>environment. It's based on server 2003 which *is* supported as a guest.
>
>I also think it is a mistake not to support Virtual Server on a Windows 7 host.

I know.. All the great stuff I read about Win7 and it's use of VHD's and VS is
turning out to be less than grand.

>
>Actually, both these scenarios very likely work. But if getting Virtual Server
>to run on Windows 7 is too much of a pain (it really is a pain), there is always
>the free VMWare Server.

I may give that a go.

The reason I like the idea of running WHS in a VM is transportability, I can
just move the file to whatever machine I need it to run on at the moment.

I may just get one of the cheep Atom boards that Newegg has for $70 and build
my own. I mostly need it for media sharing, NAS, and print server.

WHS *does* have a print server.. right?

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:07:45 -0500, David Wilkinson <no->
wrote:

> there is always
>the free VMWare Server.


I'm d/l'ing it now. I'll give that a shot, thanks.

G. Morgan wrote:
> WHS *does* have a print server.. right?

No it doesn't. And installing printer drivers, like many things you would like
to do in WHS, is not supported. It might work, but the drivers for many consumer
printers will not install on a server OS.

What I do is have the host be the print server.

--
David Wilkinson
Visual C++ MVP

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:48:19 -0500, David Wilkinson <no->
wrote:

>G. Morgan wrote:
>> WHS *does* have a print server.. right?
>
>No it doesn't. And installing printer drivers, like many things you would like
>to do in WHS, is not supported. It might work, but the drivers for many consumer
>printers will not install on a server OS.
>
>What I do is have the host be the print server.

Wonderful....

There goes my idea of building a dedicated Atom based, low power server, if I
have to run a host OS.

I also have a Server 2008 R2 key, good for 6 months I think. Would I be
better off with that? (I'm a newbie with server OSes)