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Windows Vista Virtualization: What You Need To Know To Get Started: Page 3 of 6

It is fairly easy to do this and you don't necessarily need a server to host the virtual Vista instance. Lots of manufacturers now offer machine virtualization technologies. What is even better is that many of these technologies are completely free! For example, Microsoft offers Virtual PC and Virtual Server 2005, VMware offers VMware Server, and Citrix offers XenServer Express, all for free. Others such as Oracle and Sun both offer free virtual machine engines -- Oracle offers Oracle VM and Sun offers xVM -- but their engines are not optimized for Windows operating systems, so you won't gain by using them for this purpose.

Of the three that do run Windows properly, the best choice might be Citrix XenServer Express since it is an operating system in and of itself. With the Microsoft and VMware offerings, you need to first load a supported OS on the host system, then load the virtualization engine. With XenServer, you just load XenServer, then create the virtual instances of the operating systems you need.

This arrangement can offer the best of all worlds. Here's why:

  1. When you run Windows Vista on a system, server, or PC, you need a license. All retail Vista licenses only allow one single instance of the operating system to run for each license. The Enterprise Edition, however, offers up to four virtual instances of Windows Vista for each license you own. Note that the only way to acquire the Enterprise license is through a Software Assurance program. This is often out of reach for small to medium businesses.
  2. If you use the Microsoft or VMware virtualization engines, you'll need a license for the OS running on the actual hardware system if you choose the Windows version. Then you'll need a license for each instance of Vista you want to run in a virtual instance.