I had a Windows 2000 Server running in my basement acting as an AD controller and print server. That’s pretty much all it did.
Okay, it also ran my JBidWatcher program for sniping eBay auctions… As much as I dislike Windows I have to admit that it’s useful to have a Windows box running all the time at home.
About a week ago we started talking about VMware at work and I thought it would be interesting to install the free version on my CentOS server that runs this web site (and several others, and my email, etc.)
So I installed it and propped up a Windows 2000 Server on it. Man, that’s slick.
The virtualized Win2K server runs faster than the one running on the discrete hardware (a PII 500 I think)! And I see no appreciable load added to the host CentOS server (a Xeon 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM).
So I added the virtualized Win2K server as an AD controller in the existing domain, setup the DHCP, DNS and print services to match what was on the old server and then shutdown the old server.
All I had to do next was change the printer definitions on the client machines to point to the new server and away we go!
I also have a Solaris 10 virtual machine running on the same box, but I haven’t really started to play with it yet.
Man that VMware stuff is cool.
I think I’ll take the old Win2K box and use it to replace my firewall (currently a 133MHz Pentium) – but not run Win2K on it.
