Comments on: About Windows Vista’s built-in hypervisor

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:48:04 +0000

Phil, yes, if you are lucky, then you can work with just one image for all your XP machines. But this doesn't always work. We experienced numerous cases where we ran into problems. Vista images are hardware independent by design. This is not the case for XP. We use cloning technology since Windows NT 4. It took Microsoft quite some time to understood that this is the best way to deploy an OS. MattA, Ghost was the first cloning tool I've ever used and if I remember it right it was the first cloning solution for Windows. It must have been in another century. Good to know that it is still alive. Dave, you won't believe that there are still quite a few NT machines out there for the same reason. Of course, it takes some time until old hardware can be replaced. It was always like this. I blogged about this topic a while back.

By: Overzicht Virtual Desktop Infrastructure van Citrix « EarlyBert

Overzicht Virtual Desktop Infrastructure van Citrix « EarlyBert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:44:43 +0000

[...] een enkel image kunt werken voor alle desktops. Over dit onderwerp publiceerde Michael Pietroforte pas nog een artikel met de stelling dat een enkelvoudig image ook heel goed mogelijk is zonder hypervisor eronder: The [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:41:30 +0000

Like you, I work for a college. The problem I see with your Vista argument, and the reason that we are very slow to move to it despite the student & faculty desire to have it, is that most of our existing PCs will not run Vista.

I don’t think any amount of PR can cure that problem.

By: MattA

MattA — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:04:19 +0000

Wow, thanks for the article Michael! We’ve been using Vista with Ghost for about six months. This presents some interesting options. Unfortunately we have a mixed XP/Vista environment, and 75% of our users are off-site, so we cannot take advantage of Vista’s “one image” ideal of changing programs on the fly. Still, good to know.

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:37:01 +0000

I think the “single image argument” in favor of VDI is made by someone unfamiliar with the finer points of sysprep.

I have a single deployment image for my Windows XP desktops *right now* – it works on plain IDE, non-AHCI ICH SATA, AHCI SATA, SAS, SCSI, RAID cards, etc; it covers everything from a lowly Dell Dimension 4100 to a Dell Precision T3400. Vista and ImageX make the whole process a lot easier (or so they say, I’ve never tried it).

I even have one of these deployment images for Windows 2000!