Once you have worked on any system with multiple monitors going back to a single monitor is difficult. I myself have done web development on a triple monitor setup, 3 19″ LCD panels and now anything less is hard. Now moving into the virtualization space, you may think that the multiple monitor setup is dead, but truly there are actually more possibilities then ever before. With vmware tools installed, and 2 monitors you can drag files back and forth between not only monitors but completely different operating systems.

Here are the most common setups which are possible in a virtual world, in regards to multiple screens:
1) Multiple Monitors = Multiple Virtual Machines
1.a) User a single computer with multiple monitors to display multiple virtual machines, either in VMware workstation or VMware Server.
1.b) Use multiple physical computers to remotely connect to many virtual machines on a virtual server.

2) Spanning all the monitors on one pc with a single virtual machine
2.a) Using VMware Workstation 6 or greater to span the physical monitors on a single system.
2.b) Using Microsoft remote desktop to connect to a remote virtual machine, and using the remote desktop spanning capabilities to cover all monitors

3) Connect to virtual monitors on a virtual machine from a physical machine
3.a) Using a tool like VNC, connect to a machine, and display one of its virtual monitors remotely, useful when you have multiple computers, each with a single monitor, as the mouse can seamlessly move between any monitor.

2 Programs Which Every Multi Monitor Setup Should Have:

Ultramon
Realtime Soft UltraMon
UltraMon is a utility for multi-monitor systems, designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors.
* efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop
* manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar
* control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts
* multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers
* mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation

UPDATE: You only need a single license for the base workstation, not each Virtual Machine
I have confirmed with Christian Studer of Realtime Software, that “you would only need a single license, the virtual machines don’t require a separate license.” So if you have a license for your main system you are all set for licensing.

Splitview
SplitView - Split screen monitor
Split your monitor! SplitView increases productivity by making it easy to work with two or more applications side by side. It helps make full use of your high resolution monitor and gives the benefit of dual-monitors without their associated cost. SplitView is perfect for deploying Citrix and Remote Desktop with dual-monitors, and ideal for using dual-monitors in ’span’ mode.

Sources:
VMware Communities: Rotated Monitor in XP Pro
Breaking News–Workstation 6 Previews VMware’s Future Server Virtualization

Ultramon forum
Realtime Soft Forum
Realtime Soft Forum

VMware Workstation 6.0 Users Manual [PDF format]
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws6_manual.pdf

Virtual PC Related:
Using Virtual PC with Multiple Monitors, Sort Of

Terminal Server Client
Terminal Services Team Blog : Multi Monitor support in the Vista TS Client

Want to build a safe secure redundant load balanced corporate infrastructure all inside one box?

Here are some simple DIY plans.

What is required is a dual nic server, with a installed virtual machine manager capable of supporting a virtual networks along with bridged connections to the intranet and internet.

Here is the diagram of the layout of your secure network:

The thinking behind this is to protect your servers from attacks from the internet. By passing all traffic from the first physical nic into a firewall virtual machine and then onto the virtual network prevents many common attacks, yet provides effective access to all resources from the outside and inside your corporation. The addition of a load balancer virtual machine allows the addition of multple http or mail servers to cover the demands. By adding a second virtual network for the database and http server it prevents bottlenecks on the main virtual network and secures the database server from outside attacks.

Some other ideas include having a VPN virtual machine to allow direct access from the primary physical nic to the secondary nic, bypassing the firewall and virtual network.

Here are some great pre made virtual images to use for your secure virtual network:

Firewall Images
Sieve Firewall

Load Balancer Images:
The Loadbalancer.org Virtual Appliance

Hercules Load Balancer Virtual Appliance

Web Server Only Images:
Apache Appliance

Database Only Images:
MySQL Database Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition Virtual Appliance
PostgreSQL Database Server

Mail Server Images:
MailEdge Enterprise Messaging Server 2.0
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Virtual Appliance

Network Attached Storage:
FreeNAS

VOIP Image:
Asterisk-Skypho 0.9.1
PBXware - IP-PBX Phone System
VoIPonCD - an easy to configure Voice over IP PBX

Additional Points of Interest:

Network firewalls

Virtual machines are not protected by any firewall software on the host operating system. The reason for this is that the virtual machines are essentially connected to the network at layer 2 while most conventional firewalls operate at layer 3 or higher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model). As such virtual machines should always have appropriate fire walling software enabled. If your guest operating system does not have firewall software readily handy (or you do not want to install a software firewall in the guest operating system) using Shared Networking under Virtual PC (as opposed to connecting the virtual machine directly to the network) will gain you a modicum of network security as - like with most NAT routing solutions - external network entities will be unable to communicate directly with your virtual machine. source

Additional Articles

Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog : Network Load Balancing (NLB) and virtual machines

Network Load Balancing scenarios that are supported for use with Virtual Server 2005 R2

How to build an ISA firewall lab with Virtual PC 2004

Setting Up A Virtual Pc “complex” Network

Microsoft.com: Securing Virtual Server

Finally, there is a common machine format. Only took a few years.

OVF supports a number of features that will enhance customers’ experience with virtualization, including portability, platform independence, verification, signing, versioning, and licensing terms. OVF enables:

* A simple, robust, and user-friendly experience
* Increased customer flexibility through virtualization platform independence
* Simple creation of complex pre-configured multi-tiered services
* Portability of virtual machines and efficient delivery of enterprise software
* Platform specific enhancements and adoption of advances in virtualization through extensibility

Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, and XenSource have submitted the Open Virtual Machine Format Specification (OVF) to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) for further development into an industry standard. The OVF specification describes an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of (collections of) virtual machines. Its goal is to facilitate the automated, secure management not only of virtual machines, but the appliance as a functional unit.

The proposed OVF uses existing packaging tools to combine one or more virtual machines together with a standards-based XML wrapper, giving the virtualization platform a portable package containing all required installation and configuration parameters for the virtual machines. This allows any virtualization platform that implements the standard to correctly install and run the virtual machines.

This is a great step in the right direction. I really like the idea of someday being able to download 1 compressed file, containing a collection of virtual machines, already configured to deploy a complete server platform. Just imagine, having the database, e-mail, web, file, and firewall server each packaged individually, and then grouped together. 1 complete open-source virtualization server room, in a single file.

VMware has gone a step further, and opened up their disk format to open source as well. “VMware is offering our virtual machine disk format openly and freely to the virtualization industry,” said Brian Byun, vice president of products and alliances at VMware. “We are doing so because we believe open and freely- useable specifications should increase the availability of complementary products, provide customers unfettered choice and increased interoperability in their virtualized IT environments and further expand the virtualization market which is good for VMware.”

VirtualIron said “We’ve always supported open standards, whether it’s the current Microsoft VHD or the future OVF.”

“The format is based on a TAR file, includes disk images (eg VMware VMDK or Microsoft VHD), but also includes a description of the rest of the virtualized hardware. Moreover, unlike prior formats (as far as I know), OVF can describe collections of VMs, so as to describe multi-tier services.”

Sources:
Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog : DMTF accepts new open virtual machine format
Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) -Virtual Machines - Virtualization - VMware
VMware Introduces Open Virtual Machine Disk Format Specification
Open Virtual Machine Format Specification (OVF) Submitted to DMTF.
DMTF Accepts New Format for Portable Virtual Machines from Virtualization Leaders
VMware Intros Open Virtual Machine Disk Format Specification
Open Virtual Machine Format (Virtualization Blog)
Dugie’s Pensieve » Blog Archive » VMware, Microsoft and XEN agree

Just a little bit from Apples website, in case you didn’t take the time to read it when you downloaded boot camp:

Boot Camp Beta Expiration

Boot Camp Beta versions 1.0 through 1.2 expire on September 30, 2007. Boot Camp Beta is licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. To continue previewing Boot Camp after September 30, click the Download Now button above to install the latest version of Boot Camp Beta. You do not have to reinstall Windows. This new beta license will allow you to continue using Boot Camp until Mac OS X Leopard is available (expected October 2007).
Updating to Boot Camp 1.4 beta

If you previously installed Boot Camp beta, you can easily update to Boot Camp 1.4 beta. You don’t need to partition your hard drive again (unless you want to change its size) or reinstall your Macintosh and Windows software or documents, but it’s very important to update the Boot Camp Assistant software, create a new Mac Drivers CD and install the updated software it contains onto Windows. Complete instructions are provided in the Installation and Setup Guide included with the Boot Camp 1.4 beta software.

There is no word about whether it will continue to function after these dates, but it will be violating the terms of service, and will not be eligible for support from Apple. This is just a little trick to get everyone to upgrade to Leopard when it ships later this month. One of the legal solutions, if you aren’t already running it is Parallels. Run Windows on Mac OS X without rebooting!. Parallels allows you to mount the windows partition as a source for the virtual machine.

If you’re not ready to upgrade to Leopard right away and still want to use your Boot Camp partition, Parallels makes life very, very easy:

Option 1: The redirection
For months now, Parallels Desktop has been able to use a Boot Camp partition as a virtual hard drive, meaning that you can boot your Windows XP or Windows Vista partition in a virtual machine at any time, and move back and forth between the two. When Boot Camp’s license expires, you can still access your hard drive partition without using Boot Camp by booting the partition into a virtual machine. You won’t have to reinstall anything or worry about losing any of your critical Windows files.

Option 2: The full-on migration
Tired of Boot Camp and want to go all-Parallels? Run Parallels Transporter (bundled free with every copy of Desktop for Mac) to convert your Boot Camp partition to a fully-functional Parallels virtual machine. Copy the new virtual machine over to your OS X partition and start using as a new VM within Parallels Desktop. Once its Transported, you can delete your Boot Camp partition and free up a ton of disk space. Working with a native Parallels image also gives you access to key features like undo disks & snapshots.

Enjoy your favorite Windows-only 3D games and graphic applications on your Mac - Get Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac!

Sources:
Apple Boot Camp Beta Expires With Leopard — Mac OS X — InformationWeek
Apple Boot Camp
The Official Parallels Virtualization Blog: What to do with your expiring Boot Camp partition

After reviewing a variety of different virtualization products there is only 1 constant. They all happily boot from an ISO cdrom image. Each vendor has their own format for the hard drive, and there are a variety of floppy disk image formats also.

This is a draft, which as time allows I will expand

What I have done is gather the list to make a simple table outlining the floppy image formats, and the descriptions of them:

.dsk

There are a number of programs that produce images of disks. These images typically start with hex EB and, as an image, most any program that can produce/read a disk image can read the image produced by a different program. Various programs use this extension; too many to list individually. Take clues from the location of the file as a possible pointer to exactly which program is producing the file. The file’s date and time can also help if you know which programs you were running when the file was written. (source)

.img

All image creates image files of any disk (USB Flash Drives, Floppy Drives, Hard Drives, etc). Saves the image file compressed, uncompressed or as a highly customizable self-extracting EXE using a wizard-like interface.

Note: QEMU is a generic and open source processor emulator which achieves emulation speed by using dynamic translation. Qcow is a QEMU specific image format, with support for compression and optional AES encryption. (source)

.ffd

.vfd

.dmg

On the Macintosh, these files are treated like a real disk. They can be created with Disk Copy, burnt to CD or mounted as a normal volume. If you have a .DMG file on a Windows PC it’s likely you have a Macintosh file and you won’t be able to use what is in it. Some sites distribute for the PC in an .EXE file and for the Mac in a .DMG file; make certain you have the version designed for your system. On a Windows PC the dmg2iso program will convert a .DMG file to an .ISO file which can then be burned to a CD or read using an .ISO file reader. Note: You have to run the dmg2iso program at a command prompt using the same command as listed on the site for the Perl version, substituting .EXE for .PL in the command. DMGs can be password-protected and, if so, may not be mountable by some software. The DMG file also comes in different formats: HFS, HFS+, UFS, ProDOS, Linux, and Fat32 and so may also require special mounting software to account for the format. IsoBuster can interpret these files directly as can other programs such as UltraISO. (source)

.emt

.iso and .flp
the .flp file is identical to the .iso file (source)

sources:
http://filext.com/file-extension/FLP
http://www.magiciso.com/

Generally notes:

RawWrite is now avail for Windows.
RawWrite (or rawrite) is an essential tool for creating boot disks and other floppy disk images. Traditional rawwrite programs do no run under modern versions of windows so here is the Win32 version which does. (source)

General Sources:
Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog : Floppy disk image formats supported by Virtual PC and Virtual Server
Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog : Using 5.25” floppy disks with Virtual PC
Virtual PC [Archive] - The macosxhints Forums
Rawrite and related programs
emtcopy: Disk Tools
emBoot - Network Boot for Virtual Machines (VM)
VM Back
Virtual PC and Floppy Images : Paco Hope
Gilles Vollant software: winimage
bootdisk.com

Recently Microsoft has release Virtual PC 2007. This is their lightweight virtualization platform. Why do I qualify it as “lightweight”?

Because I have created the categories for virtualization software. I have decided on three classes of virtualization software: Lightweight, Server, and Enterprise.

Lightweight runs on top of a standard operating system, and only allows 1 virtual machine per executable.
Server runs on top of a standard operating system but can concurrently run multiple virtual machines.
Enterprise this requires either a customization of the kernel (such as OpenVZ), unique hardware requirements including Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V™) hardware assist or a bare metal system with a custom operating system installed on it.

These qualifications may change, but they do a nice job of laying out the major features and differences between virtualization technology.

Here is my initial map of virtualization software:

Lightweight
VMware Player
VMware Fusion
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
Parallels Desktop
Parallels Workstation

Server
VMware Server
VMware Workstation (moved from lightweight, due to misunderstanding)
Microsoft Virtual Server 2k5 RC1

Enterprise
SWsoft Virtuozzo
OpenVZ
VMware ESX server
Xensource Xen Enterprise
Xensource Xen Server
Xensource Xen Express
Virtual Iron

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or feedback please post a comment. I will reply to any feedback and look forward to adding more software to this list as the industry grows.

Qemu has been removed, and listed as “Emulation Software”

SPEC has welcomed SWSoft into the virtual server performance rating group. SPEC is a organization for benchmark standards in high performance computing. Other players in the group include: AMD, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and VMware (listed in alphabetical order). All of these companies have taken a slightly different approach to virtualization and have huge potential market growth as virtualization expands in the future.
My Take:

SWSoft, using their variation of paravirtualization, will probably fight for server tests to show off their best features. Which isn’t wrong, all the companies are going to push their best features. But what should the virtualization standard be based on? There are a few different flavors of virtualization, mainly paravirtualization, operating system virtualization, and native virtualization. I feel that there will be two standards, full native virtualization with off the shelf software, and then full optimized os virtualization.

Looking back over the years of reading computer reviews of standard desktop computers, back to the day of the 486 and low end Pentium’s, I remember how I used to test a new computer, Solitaire. It was free, fun, and included with every version of windows. When you win at Solitaire the cards drop, the speed the cards drop is directly related to the speed of the computer. It runs faster on a Pentium then it did on my first 386. I have tried it inside of Virtual Server 2k5, with Windows 3.11 and i fill post my findings later on that. Full Native should be the first rating, how fast can 1 box run X number of VM’s with full server installs running standard stress tests. Scores could be reported as 5×800 score or 10×569 or 20×340 etc.

A simple test sequence of:

1. Local Hard Drive Access (file copy test to VHD)
2. Local Memory Access (Intensive Memory read write test)
3. Lan Access (file transfer testing across a physical network)
4. Local File Transfer (file transfer between virtual machines)
5. CPU Power Tests ( transaction processing, I always enjoy Towers of Hanoi to max out my CPU’s)

Now the advantage of running this or similar test sequence on a host system, each virtual machine will be at the same sequance in the series at the same time. So any automatic optimization to move resources between virtual machines will not pay off. When one machine needs the ram, they will all need it, when one needs the bandwidth, they all need the bandwidth.

More on this later…
Sources:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2007/01/swsoft_assists.html

http://networkblog.itproportal.com/?p=282

http://hitechinfoguide.com/news/SWsoft-Assists-SPEC-with-Virtualization-Benchmarking/

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/03/09/1443686.htm