When you hear about virtualization, most of the time the reference is to server virtualization. Practically all server operating systems, including IBM i, support some type of virtualization, providing the capability of running multiple versions of the same or different operating systems on the same physical hardware.

Desktop virtualization has been available for several years. One of the most popular products is VMWare. Another product is Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is available as a no-charge download from Microsoft.

The idea with Virtual PC is that you can install multiple operating systems on your Windows PC. When you produce a Virtual PC configuration, two files are created on your PC.

One is a control file that is rather small, and the other is an "image" file that contains the virtual PC that you create. When you create a virtual PC, you specify the operating system that will be installed onto the virtual PC. Virtual PC 2007 then allocates disk space on your PC disk drive, opens a window, and appears to start booting another PC inside the window. You can attach this virtual PC to your physical DVD drive or to DVD ISO image files, and boot from the DVD or an image to install another operating system into the virtual PC.

I recently downloaded, installed, and configured Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 onto a PC that is running Windows XP 64-bit. I have 8GB of memory installed in that machine, along with two 500GB hard disk drives.

Figure 1 shows the Virtual PC Console with some of the instances of virtual PCs that I installed. On my PC, I created virtual PCs for Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server, and two additional versions of Windows XP (32-bit). In the Settings window, you can adjust the amount of memory you want to allocate to the virtual PC instance when it starts and allocate other hardware features to the virtual PC.

Because I have 8GB of actual memory on the host PC, I can start several virtual PC instances at the same time. Each virtual PC starts up in its own window. Once it boots up, it looks and acts exactly the same as a real PC with that operating system would. I have access to the LAN, the DVD, the mouse, and the keyboard.

One of the great features of using Virtual PC 2007 is that I can create a standard Windows image, install all the service packs and other features I need, and then create a backup copy of the multigigabyte image file. If I later need to create another new virtual PC, I can simply rename the backup copy, start up the Virtual PC Console, and attach another virtual PC instance to the image file. I can also save a complete virtual PC configuration to a USB device, go to another PC that has Virtual PC 2007 installed, and start running my saved configuration on that PC.

Virtual PC 2007 is a great solution if you need to or want to try running different operating systems or if you need a test environment and don't want to disturb your main PC environment. From start to finish, it takes only a few minutes to download, install, and start using Virtual PC 2007. You will need the install media to install additional operating systems, and you are expected to comply with licensing requirements; Virtual PC 2007 does not give you carte blanche to simply start copying.