How to run a VM from server on a client PC?

S

SedoSan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 29, 2012
Messages
145
Hello,

I just wanted general knowledge or idea about how the whole system works in a virtual environment. What I know until now is this:

You have a cluster that contains a couple or more servers which run ESXi, then you have your VMs. (a side question, what is the difference between a data center/cluster).

My main question is. I know that the VMs are running in the ESXi host (server). And I know that I can access them from (vSphere). However what I want to know, I know it is possible to run a VM as if it is the actual OS installed on a client PC, but how is it done? what gets installed on that client's PC?

To make it more clear, lets say I have my server with VM Hypervisor ESXi 5.1, and I make a Windows 7 x64 VM on it. Now I get a cheap PC for my brother and I want him to access that Windows 7 VM on his PC as if that Windows 7 is installed as an OS on his PC. How do I do that? (is that how this works? or am I missing a step)?
 
VMware Player or VMware Workstation is what your brother would need to use a VM you created in ESXi.
 
Are you wanting to access the Win7 VM from your ESXi Host? And would it be on the same network? If so you need to look into PC-OIP which would allow you to view the VM on the client PC as if they were there. Or you could also use RDP and access it that way. What are you wanting to do with the Win7 VM?
 
Netwerkz101 said:
VMware Player or VMware Workstation is what your brother would need to use a VM you created in ESXi.
Click to expand...

So is "VMware Player" kinda like an OS? or do I have to install some OS first THEN run VMware Player?

bleeblak8 said:
Are you wanting to access the Win7 VM from your ESXi Host? And would it be on the same network? If so you need to look into PC-OIP which would allow you to view the VM on the client PC as if they were there. Or you could also use RDP and access it that way. What are you wanting to do with the Win7 VM?
Click to expand...

Well, I was thinking if my server is already powerful enough, then I don't have to get high-end desktop PCs for the users in the household, instead I could create VMs for them to use instead. If you can see in this video in youtube @4:40 you can see the guy being able to see around 6 VMs running with their users running them (so I'm guessing 6 different people having these VMs open in their computers), this is kinda what I want to do. But instead of say installing a windows OS to run VMware and accessing the VM on the ESX host, I will install some sort of an OS that will connect me to that VM machine. <-- I'm just assuming but is this possible?
 
SedoSan said:
So is "VMware Player" kinda like an OS? or do I have to install some OS first THEN run VMware Player?



Well, I was thinking if my server is already powerful enough, then I don't have to get high-end desktop PCs for the users in the household, instead I could create VMs for them to use instead. If you can see in this video in youtube @4:40 you can see the guy being able to see around 6 VMs running with their users running them (so I'm guessing 6 different people having these VMs open in their computers), this is kinda what I want to do. But instead of say installing a windows OS to run VMware and accessing the VM on the ESX host, I will install some sort of an OS that will connect me to that VM machine. <-- I'm just assuming but is this possible?
Click to expand...

No, VMware Player is software you install in Windows, then you can run virtualized guests inside of VMware Player.
 
Dark Shade said:
No, VMware Player is software you install in Windows, then you can run virtualized guests inside of VMware Player.
Click to expand...

I figured out that much, what I'm looking for though, is that the client will switch on his PC, then the PC will log on INTO that VM machine, is there such a system? thanks.
 
SedoSan said:
I figured out that much, what I'm looking for though, is that the client will switch on his PC, then the PC will log on INTO that VM machine, is there such a system? thanks.
Click to expand...

I think I get what you are asking for now.
The whole hypervisor thing threw me off I guess.
I thought you wanted to share a virtual machine image (the actual files that make up the VM with your brother).

You can simply have the client RDP to the Win7 VM - assuming Pro and higher version and not considering security over public networks.
or
Virtual Desktop - as in VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop ... HyperV+RemoteFX

How simple depends on your true goals ... just your brother with occasional access or you want to provide multiple users full blown desktop experience.
 
Netwerkz101 said:
I think I get what you are asking for now.
The whole hypervisor thing threw me off I guess.
I thought you wanted to share a virtual machine image (the actual files that make up the VM with your brother).

You can simply have the client RDP to the Win7 VM - assuming Pro and higher version and not considering security over public networks.
or
Virtual Desktop - as in VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop ... HyperV+RemoteFX

How simple depends on your true goals ... just your brother with occasional access or you want to provide multiple users full blown desktop experience.
Click to expand...

Interesting I'll have to look up those...
As to my true goals, I'm making my home computer lab (Computers is my hobby even though I never majored in it so I like to do my own experiments and I think this will vastly increase my knowledge in IT). I'm building my server anytime in the next 2 months and I guess I wanna be prepared by that time. We're only 8 people in a 3 floor villa and I already have every single room with double ethernet jacks (cat6). I was thinking of I could built a PC for every room/kitchen/hall etc... and instead of buying high end PC for every room i'll just get a cheap one which would run a VM directly from the main server room.

Now what would they access on the PC, basically just normal internet browsing and very light stuff (playing spades, etc...). However you just gave me an idea for a full blow PC experience... Maybe I want to do that as well for a couple of PCs~

As for my main server its gonna be something like this:
Case: Supermicro SC846BA-R1K28B
Mobo: Supermicro X9DAE
Processor: 2x Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2660 v2
RAM: 64GB ECC RAM 8x(M393B1K70DH0-CK008/Q8/E8)
Switch: Cisco SG500X-48P-K9-NA (48 1GbE Ports + 4 10GbE SPF+ Ports)
10GB NIC: Intel X520-DA2
RAID Controller: IBM SERVERAID M1015 ADAPTER PCI-E 2.0 X8
SAS Expander: 468405-001 HP 3GB 24 Port

As for storage I already have a RAID6 8x 3TB WD RED HDDs that I will be transferring to this new server and expanding to it.

I was thinking maybe in the future I could add some high-end graphic cards to it and let other users use the VM to game as well... (just my small little project).
 
SedoSan said:
I was thinking of I could built a PC for every room/kitchen/hall etc... and instead of buying high end PC for every room i'll just get a cheap one which would run a VM directly from the main server room.
Click to expand...

It's all about the use cases. Odds are you can just buy a few $200 7" Android tablets and most people in your house will be perfectly fine checking their email and facebook on it.

So find out what people would want to do before you build a solution that solves a problem no one actually has.
 
I have checked the programs you mentioned, they all seemed to be applications rather than "Operating systems"...
Just to make sure again, what I'm looking for is this:
User switches on his PC, after BIOS, the PC will prompt which VM he wants to log into, he will choose his Win7 VM and logs into it.
Is there such a thing?
Sorry if I sound a bit noobish.
 
That can be done with Citrix XenDesktop.
You will need to run a backend application to support your use case.

Or, simply have the machine boot to some form of Linux and auto start a remote desktop connection.
 
If you're trying to do this when you turn on the pc, how is this different from multi-boot? Why even bother with virtualization?
 
SedoSan said:
I have checked the programs you mentioned, they all seemed to be applications rather than "Operating systems"...
Just to make sure again, what I'm looking for is this:
User switches on his PC, after BIOS, the PC will prompt which VM he wants to log into, he will choose his Win7 VM and logs into it.
Is there such a thing?
Sorry if I sound a bit noobish.
Click to expand...

If the guest OS's are Windows, use RDP. Make a custom RDP connection and turn up all the settings.
You dont need any fancy VMWare software or PCOIP, RDP is excellent.

There is a special version of Windows 7 called Windows Thin Client, it will run on almost anything, works great even with only 256mb ram. You can download it somewhere on the interwebs.

There are also Linux Thin Client OS's that you can look into. The SUSE one is good from my experience.
 
SedoSan said:
I have checked the programs you mentioned, they all seemed to be applications rather than "Operating systems"...
Just to make sure again, what I'm looking for is this:
User switches on his PC, after BIOS, the PC will prompt which VM he wants to log into, he will choose his Win7 VM and logs into it.

Is there such a thing?
Sorry if I sound a bit noobish.
Click to expand...

Yes, they are "applications" that allow you to do exactly what you are asking to do.
There are two sides ... the client side (endpoint device) and then there is the backend
infrastructure "servers" that support your ability to do it.

How simple or complicated you want it to be is up to you.

Simple/cheap:
- Repurposed Windows machine that runs MSTSC.EXE instead of EXPLORE.EXE as the shell, so a direct RDP connection to the Win7 VM is made.

- Can do similar with a Linux system that has RDP compatible client.
- Windows Embedded thin clients allow for this too.

Complex/expensive:
- Citrix Xendesktop + thin clients or repurposed PCs running Citrix Receiver Client and getting a choice of available VMs to connect to.

Don't worry about the noobish feeling ... it's constant for me! :)
I have a Wyse Xenith Zero Client that boots up and connects to a published desktop in my XenApp lab ... it can do the same with XenDesktop ... so what you seek is possible.
Just how much effort and money to put into it and what you need out of it are the only real
questions.
 
Netwerkz101 said:
Don't worry about the noobish feeling ... it's constant for me! :)
I have a Wyse Xenith Zero Client that boots up and connects to a published desktop in my XenApp lab ... it can do the same with XenDesktop ... so what you seek is possible.
Just how much effort and money to put into it and what you need out of it are the only real
questions.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, I'll make sure to look them up, how do you make windows load to MSTSC.EXE on boot?

My budget is around 8,000$ for the whole computer lab and welling to put a lot of effort!
Basically what I wanna do is an experimental computer lab for me, and a nice storage server for the household, a fast network for when friends come over and plug into the ethernet jack, couple of servers such as TeamSpeak, some media streaming server, FTP server, OpenVPN server, probably some game servers such as minecraft. I also want to have a lot of room if I wanna test out new things~ It was only a couple of months ago that I discovered the real power of VMs and I'm trying to implement that into my system...

With that budget, what more stuff I can get? with the list of stuff I have in mind I got around 2,500$ to spare...


*** Edit ***
Ok, I've figured out the whole booting into MSTSC.EXE, its cool honestly and it would work perfectly. I have some questions though, apparently since I'm only going to use RDP on that machine, then nothing else should matter on that client machine, right? So what's the best OS to install? if I install winXP how will would it work with RDPing into a win7 machine? Also how would USB devices connected to the client machine be treated? =\
 
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If your server has enough ports and your hardware supports it, you could have a graphics card mapped directly to each virtual machine in your server and get a hdmi-to-ethernet extender (runs on two cat5's in parallel) so that the monitor/keyboard/mouse in each room is just a terminal. That's the only way I know of that you can do exactly what you're describing.

Everyone else's suggestions are great too.

I'd also reiterate the point, make sure the problem you're trying to solve is actually a problem before you invest in it.
 
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