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Transparent Virtual Machine with multiple Monitors?

P

Paperlantern

Platinum Member
This may be sort of a dream I'm living in, I did some searching and wasnt able to come up with all that much results. i don't know if it is because i'm not searching the right terms or what. Let me just say what it is I am after.

Basically a virtual machine piggy backing on a really lightweight version of Linux. Ideally, you would plug in your thumb drive, or boot drive with the Linux distribution on it, the virtualization software installed, and the VM disk loaded. The thing would be configured so that when it boots, Linux load the essentials, starts a kernel, detects hardware etc, similar to what a live disc would do (i realize this may make it less lightweight, but really the size isnt a concern, it would still ideally be as lightweight as possible and still achieve this). No gui would come up for linux, the sole purpose for this would be to then kick off a virtual machine... really any virtual machine that you have loaded on your drive, and it would just begin booting the VM, whether it be windows, another linux distro, whatever. To an end user turning on the machine, it essentially will look like the system is running the guest OS natively.

Are there things out there like this, how-to's? has anyone done this? Would it work? It seems like the theory is sound but I know it could potentially be a bit scrappy. So i'm not sure if its even possible.

Ive kinda thought a linux distro with virtual box installed might get the job done, but... not sure.

And if it is, complicating things further... how about multiple monitors?
 
You can do this with ESXi, but it is kind of a PITA. What you would do is load ESXi as the native hypervisor. Then from a remote computer running the viClient, enable device passthrough of a secondary video card to the virtual machine. Device passthrough typically requires Xeon class processors and motherboards though.
 
ESXi is primarily a SERVER though is it not. Primarily the system would need to run as if it was a regular workstation, turn it on, linux loads trasparently and the VM comes up, full screen, just like its the system that is installed. No toolbars, no windows, just a full screen... say Windows XP box. The multiple monitors i guess is less of a concern than at least getting the VM to boot full screen and run as if it was the native installed OS to the user. The monitors I could tinker with after i get a system that works. My primary use for this is a group of training room PCs. If i can get multi monitors working, i could use them on all of our production PCs, but that would be icing.
 
What I mean is ESXi is a SERVER, A) it wont run unless VTx is present on the machine, and I dont know if it is, this is just a workstation computer. B) if VTx is present, ive installed ESXi before, its JUST A SERVER, the console just displays the IP address of the box, and you can get to a few small menus, it doesnt run anything you can actually see. Al of the guest OS's are viewed through the vSphere program installed on another machine.

Are you saying just enabling the device passthrough will make the VM boot to the monitor of the ESXi machine?
 
Yes, if you passthrough a secondary video as a device DIRECTLY to a VM.

FYI, I don't recommend this, but it should work.
 
Hmm i can see where it might work yeah. However, ideally id like it to be a bit more portable as well, ie not needing to have quite so much need for configuration. Basically the Linux distro would work on almost any machine (like a live cd for Mint or Ubuntu or whatever) and the VM would just boot up from that full screen. Shouldnt have any tool bars or any real way of getting out of the VM unless you "shut it down". maybe I am asking too much here. It seems like this is more of a dream than a reality.
 
What you seem to want is something like a PXE booted Windows machine. Look into Citrix Provisioning server.
 
VMware Workstation has multimonitor support for guests, but I don't think it's quote as automated as you want.
 
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