P2V on same box? (Win8 Home)

[kevinthenerd]

With Black Friday approaching, I'm looking to add a box at home with 16GB RAM, and instead of dual-booting, I'd like to virtualize multiple operating systems and run them simultaneously.

I have 2-3 questions.

First, how would licensing work if I intend to move Windows 8 Home from the bare metal to VMware vSphere Hypervisor on the same box? (I intend to use the host hardware to access the guest more-or-less directly.) Licensing won't be an issue with the other operating systems.

Second, what kind of performance can I expect from an Intel i*-series processor in a lightly virtualized environment with only one guest seeing serious load at a time? Will I really miss an enterprise-grade processor?

Third (depending on the answer to the first question), how do you recommend I do the P2V with an OEM-licensed copy Windows?

Thanks.

 

[kevinthenerd]

I've considered VirtualBox, but I'm looking for comparable performance between my two guest operating systems, and bare-metal virtualization is just more fun anyway. ;-)

 

[ViRGE]

1) Licensing won't be an issue. The System Builder version lets you move it.

2) Virtualization performance is a binary thing; either you have VT and the benefits it provides, or you don't. Most Core processors have VT support and as such will handle virtualization just as well as a Xeon.

3) Save the trouble of trying to move the OS and just reinstall it inside the virtualized environment.

 

[Dahak]

nvm.... i made a mistake