INSTALLING A VIRTUAL OPERATING SYSTEM(HYPER-V) IN WINDOWS 2008

Open Server Manager and then navigate through the console tree to Roles -> Hyper-V -> Microsoft Hyper-V Server. If this is the first time that you have used Hyper-V, then you will be prompted to accept Hyper-V License Agreement. Once you accept the license agreement, the various Hyper-V options will be made available to you.

The first thing that you must do is to click on the Connect to Server link, located in the Actions pane. When you do, you will be prompted to select the computer that you want to connect to. Choose the Local Computer option, and click OK. You will now see the screen in

Figure A.

Figure A

This is the main screen that you will use for managing virtual machines.

Creating a New Virtual Server

To create a new virtual server, click the New -> Virtual Machine options found in the Actions pane. When you do, Windows will launch the New Virtual Machine Wizard. The wizard’s initial screen explains that you can click Next to begin customizing a virtual machine, but that you also have the option of clicking Finish right now to create a virtual machine that uses the default values. For the purposes of this article, we will create a custom virtual machine so that you can see the options that are available to you.

With that said, click Next and you will be prompted to enter a name and a location for the virtual machine that you are creating. I recommend using a descriptive name. The location is up to you, but if your server contains a striped RAID array, then that is a good location to choose for performance reasons

Click Next and you will be prompted to enter the amount of memory that is to be assigned to the new virtual machine. By default, new virtual machines are assigned 512 MB of RAM, but that isn’t really enough if you plan on running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I would recommend 1 GB for Vista and 2 GB for Windows Server 2008 installations.

Click Next, and the wizard will prompt you to choose which network adapter you want to use for the machine’s virtual network connection. As you may recall, when you installed Hyper-V, you were given the opportunity to select one or more network adapters to be used by virtual machines. This option allows you to pick from the network adapters that you previously selected. The idea is that you can use a different network adapter on each virtual machine if you want, so that no single network adapter becomes over burdened.

When you have made your selection, click Next, and you will be prompted to choose the virtual hard drive that you want the machine to use, as shown in Figure B. As you can see in the figure, you can either create a new virtual hard drive, or you can use an existing one. Since there aren’t any existing virtual hard drives right now, we will have to create a new one. Windows defaults to creating a virtual hard drive that’s 127 MB in size, but you can create a drive of up to 2 TB if you want

Figure B

Click next, and you will be prompted to install an operating system on the new virtual machine. You have the option of installing an operating system later on, but you can also choose to install from a CD (or an .ISO file), a boot floppy, or from an installation server, as shown in Figure C

Figure C

You can choose to install an operating system now.

When you’ve made your choice, click Next. You will now see a summary of the options that you have created. If you have chosen to go ahead and install an operating system, then insert the operating system media, select the option to start the virtual machine, and click Finish. Windows will now launch the virtual machine and begin installing the operating system, as shown in Figure D

Figure D 

Windows will launch the new virtual machine and begin installing the guest operating system. And with that, we are done!

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Desktop Virtualization

Many IT organizations now-a-days are looking at desktop virtualization to upgrade their entire approach to desktop management. Today, individual desktops are hard-coded combinations of OS, apps and user settings, and managed one-by-one on an ongoing basis. Desktop virtualization is a solution where one moving part doesn’t have to disrupt any of the other moving parts in order to make a change. It is the concept of separating a personal computer desktop environment from the physical machine through a client-server computing model.

One of the most significant benefits of desktop virtualization is that it gives IT administrators an easy and centralized way to manage employees' computers. Instead of each computer being separate, administrators create just a handful of VMs or VM templates for different roles within a company. For instance, a company may create one VM for each worker in a research and another for each sales representative. These VMs would include not just the operating system, but also any applications and drivers the employee would need. Such deployments work best where many employees need essentially the same functionality

Vendors providing support for desktop virtualization There are large numbers of vendors providing deskop virtualization solutions. Below mentioned are the top among the lot
• Microsoft – Microsoft Virtual PC, Remote desktop services, etc.
• Citrix -        Citrix XenDesktop
• VMware -   VMware View, VMware v Sphere, etc.
• Symantec -  Endpoint Visualization

Diagrammatic representation of desktop virtualization

Advantages

1.Simpler provisioning of new desktops.

2.Reduced downtime in the event of server or client hardware failures.

3.Desktop image management capabilities.

4.Secure remote access to the enterprise desktop environment.

5.Desktop Virtualization offers major savings on expending on physical computer systems by easily installing and configuring VMs on a single computer system

Limitations
1.Compatibility – Not all applications can be virtualized easily.
2.Potential security risks if the network is not properly managed.
3.Some loss of user autonomy and privacy.
4.Challenges in setting up and maintaining drivers for printers and other peripherals.
5.Difficulty in running certain complex applications such as multimedia.
6.Increased downtime in the event of network failures.
7.Complexity and high costs of VDI deployment and management

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Add the Command Prompt to the Windows Explorer Right-Click Menu

A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a directory, and select “Command Prompt Here” from the menu.
Here’s the registry hack to get this working. Make sure you back up your registry just in case. it’ll show you the step-by-step method, but you can skip down to the bottom for the alternate reg file.

Step-By-Step Method:
Type regedit.exe into the Start\Run dialog, and then navigate to the following registry key:

 HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell Once you are at that key, right click and choose the New Key option:

Name the key “CommandPrompt” without the quotes and then double-click on the default value. Change the text to “Command Prompt Here” as seen here:

Right click on the new Command key and select New key, as you did before. Name the new key Command as well, and then double-click the default value of that key. Set the text of that key to this: cmd.exe /k cd %1 You can see what it should look like here:

Now when you right click on the folder, you should see this dialog:

That will open up a prompt like this:

Alternate method: You can create a text file named anything.reg, and insert this text into it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@=”Command Prompt:”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\Command]
@=”cmd.exe /k cd %1
Double click on that file, and the text will be entered into the registry, and you’ll have the same right click command prompt.

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