Virtual machine with static hard disk image

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ertaquo2012-12-17 14:01:05

linux

ertaquo, 2012-12-17 14:01:05

There is a server under Linux, there is a need to raise a virtual machine on it with Windows XP or 7. It is assumed that the system in the virtual machine should be configured once, and then restore this configured state with each reboot. It is possible that two or three virtual machines work simultaneously with one hard disk image.
Can you please tell me if this can be done with qemu or VirtualBox?

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8 answer(s)

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Konstantin Vlasov, 2012-12-17
@CaptainFlint

In VirtualBox, there is such a thing as immutable disks: all writing is done to a temporary differential image, and the base image remains frozen in its original state, and when the machine is turned off, all writes are discarded.
Working with several virtual machines is also possible, but only each of them will see its own copy of the disk. The base image will be a common main image for them, and all differences are recorded in separate child images - their own for each machine, non-overlapping. Simultaneous access to identical data from different virtual machines is also possible, but this requires special clustered file systems. Ordinary NTFS will simply die under such modes, it is not designed for this. For more details, see chapter 5.4 of the VirtualBox manual.
PS: Is it possible to combine multiattach with immutable - I don't know, I haven't tried it.

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OCTAGRAM, 2012-12-17
@OCTAGRAM

At least VMWare Server has such a standard feature. VMWare Server is free and there seems to be no less free VMWare ESXi

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qxfusion, 2012-12-17
@qxfusion

No - one hard drive cannot be used, maximum Copy-on-write i.e. when one disk is used as the original - and all changes are written as commits to other images.

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Vlad Zhivotnev, 2012-12-17
@inkvizitor68sl

You can do this with LVM snapshots. The virtual machine starts - a snapshot is made for it from the base image. The virtual machine stops - the snapshot is deleted.
For three virtual machines, it should not be very stupid.

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Sergey Cherepanov, 2012-12-17
@fear86

It is unlikely that the disk, but I think it’s real to forward the folder.

S

Sergey Cherepanov, 2012-12-17
@fear86

I also advise you to dig towards snapshots in the same VirtualBox. I noticed that the snapshot creates a new file, and all changes are already written to it, that is, theoretically, you can probably have 1 disk, but many copies of the snapshots (for each machine).

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asgard88, 2012-12-20
@asgard88

And there is also software for “freezing” the state of the OS, I myself used such a thing for Windows. Example - Deep Freeze

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Puma Thailand, 2012-12-19
@opium

For such things it is necessary to use network loading.