Sharing a virtual machine between different host

[Excentrik]

Hello everyone!

I've one question for which I cannot seem to find an answer in the web (forums, helps,...). I don't know if this is the right place to put the question, but here it goes.

Anyway, I would like to know what is the best method to share a virtual machine betweeen two different hosts.

Let me explain.

I have a dual boot system Linux/Vista in my system (hosts). Although, I mainly use Linux, sometimes I do change to Vista.

Now, I wanted to know if or how is it possible to have the same virtual machine (with windows XP has guest) that can run both in Vista and in Linux.

I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that help me get an answer.

Best regards

[ISD_Plc]

Do you mean the following,

You have one physical machine that has 2 OS's installed (windows/Linux) and you want to access the same guest virtual machine via both OS's depending which you boot into?

If so then yes that is fine so long as you store the vm files on a file systems that both operating systems can see. i.e fat32

cheers

[Excentrik]

Yes, that is what I meant.

And yes, the plan is to store the vm files in a fat32 partition.

But, my main concern is about the configuration on both machines, since there are some things that may be different in them (shared folders for instance).

Would it be possible to have different config files (although quite similar in hardware of course) for both host OS's? Is this the best way to do it?

Regards

[AWo · Accepted solution]

This should work, as the whole configuration is in the .vmx file and not in the .vmdk file (which is the virtual disk). Therefore this should end up in two separated machines (regarding the guest configuration) which "only" use the same disk.

Regarding the shared folder function: this shouldn't be a problem, too as this is figured out during the boot time of the guest.

There could be some mess if there are references or configurations in the guest which aren't fullfilled in one or the other environment:

• different type of vNIC when the guest IP is static (beause you'll end up with a wrong IP address in the wrong network)

• a mapping to an external share which is only available under one host OS because of the network configuration, for example

• different number of NIC's

AWo

[Excentrik]

Thanks

That was all that I wanted to confirm.

Let's see if I have any luck with it

Best regards

[AWo]

Try to get it tight by using the same configuration file under both hosts, as there are settings which might affect applications in the guest (MAC address, etc.).

AWo

[simp]

I have a question on a variation of this: is it possible to have 2 running guests (VM6) share the same virtual disk as a secondary drive, without one of the machines locking access to the drive? I am trying to have IIS in multiple guests use a single file location as the source for a website on each guest.

[mreferre]

It is not possible since NTFS is not a cluster file system and you need an arbitration algorythm to determine who can, at any point in time, have access to the disk (MS Cluster Server is an example).

If I remember from the last docs I have read briefly it is my understand MS does support this architecture / feature but using a CIFS share mounted on 2 or more IIS servers (rather than physically sharing an NTFS disk directly as above). Not sure if this is new with IIS7 or it was in previous versions as well.

Massimo.