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Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

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tomos:
WMWare player does *not* have the snapshot ability, but simply copying the files seems to have worked fine - well, I haven't tried a "restore" yet -will only do so if thing screw up- but Ren says it works ;-)
Copying when it's not running is better: it's a lot smaller -minus the page file I guess, and the restore should work better.

@cyberdiva, my experience so far:


* it *is* easy
* avoid nlite
* I didnt have to load any drivers - in spite of installing the original XP (no service packs) that AFAIK normally needs SATA drivers before it will install
* I made the virtual machine 100GB - I remember original XP having problems with terabyte drives

40hz:
@CD - if you get a chance (and can spare about an hour) do try to watch some of Eli the Computer Guy's Introduction to Virtualization video I mentioned earlier. It's a very gentle, but not dumbed-down, introduction to virtualization technology. And one of the better instructional vids I've ever seen. :) :up:

tomos:
what's the story then for licenses?

if you want to actually use an app on both virtual and real OS's, do I (technically) need two licenses, (say the license is for one machine),
or does it depend on the individual software?

f0dder:
Lastly, there is always the possibility that a malware will be specifically coded to exploit bugs in a virtual machine software and "break out" of the virtual machine.  This is not a purely theoretical concern -- I have read about virtual machine exploits -- though I don't have any idea how rare they are.  But you should always be cautious about assuming that a virtual machine provides 100% secure testing environment for truly malicious malware.-mouser (August 19, 2012, 08:30 AM)
--- End quote ---
I doubt you'd find that in a regular piece of malware.

First, the purpose of generic malware is to infect as many machines as possible, for botnet zombies or for harvesting passwords or CC data. There's not enough people running VMs that it makes sense putting VM-breakout exploits in a generic piece of malware. It's muuuuuuch more interesting to keep those exploits private, either to sell it to the highest bidder, or for doing your own very-targetted attacks.

As for snapshots vs. file-copying, snapshots are definitely prefarable, unless you're dealing with very small virtual drives, since snapshots don't copy the entire virtual disk image - instead, unless I've misunderstood things and the file sizes in my VM dirs :), it "freezes" the previous image and stores modified blocks in a new file.

tomos:
As for snapshots vs. file-copying, snapshots are definitely prefarable, unless you're dealing with very small virtual drives, since snapshots don't copy the entire virtual disk image - instead, unless I've misunderstood things and the file sizes in my VM dirs :), it "freezes" the previous image and stores modified blocks in a new file.
-f0dder (August 19, 2012, 02:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

with VMWare Workstation, I'm looking at a cost of 177.68 euros = almost US$220. (That's including tax.)
So I'll stick with the backup solution ;-)

I'm now using a backup programme that (after the initial backup) just backs up the modified blocks. I guess I could test it by restoring to a different folder and run it as a new VM. Maybe, sometime...

PS f0dder - 8,000 posts - :Thmbsup:

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