Virtualizing Existing Desktop, Successfully!

[drmike]

Are you stuck clinging onto an old desktop due to settings, fear of moving to a new desktop, etc.? Don't be.


I  long had a decent but problematic workstation.  Stuck there because of the bulk of the whole install, settings, data, etc.


Moving OSes sucks, eats life, etc.


So I took the jump and converted that 4GB of RAM workstation into a VirtualBox instance running on my much bigger newer workstation (a dual quad with 16GB of RAM).


Took a long time offline (i.e. nearly 24 hours hours) doing the whole process.  256GB image to backup and convert. There were some bumps, but even little old me conquered them.


Now, I have that old desktop running in Virtualbox.  Everything works!  So able to deal with data in the old desktop and move forward with the clean install all in one machine.


I'll do a simple how-to writeup for the benefit of others soon.

 

[Abdussamad]

Well that is something. I look forward to seeing your guide.


I have to say with Linux this isn't much of a problem because the /home partition is separate and you can upgrade to a new computer and reinstall the OS without losing everything. You do have to install all your programs again but the settings are in /home so no need to reconfigure everything from scratch.

 

[drmike]

Well that is something. I look forward to seeing your guide.


I have to say with Linux this isn't much of a problem because the /home partition is separate and you can upgrade to a new computer and reinstall the OS without losing everything. You do have to install all your programs again but the settings are in /home so no need to reconfigure everything from scratch.

It's actually pretty simple to covert the bare metal into a Virtual(ly)Box(ed) image.  Quite impressed.   Need decent hardware to have the contained version run good, but upgrading often is like that. Considering running around grabbing heaps of boxes I have offline here and turning the Intel x86 boxes into VirtualBox versions.  Then a nice overdue wipe part on the bare gear.


I hesitate to backup / migrate boxes because there seems to always be stuff left behind somehow.   Years ago I stored all data on a NAS and kept a LAN database server to isolate common ooopsies.  Workstations being so volatile and prone to breakage, yeah, semi good approach.


Write up / howto here later today.

 

[Nikki]

This was a crazy good idea! I can also see using the virtual machine as your main workstation (For example, all projects/etc, while using the actual desktop for gaming/web browsing), and keeping it all separated while giving it more resources than it had on the old machine. Would let you move over to a new desktop when the time comes quite quickly

 

[drmike]

I posted my probably incomplete notes for this over here:

 

[KuJoe]

Bonus points: Copy desktop/VM to a remote data center and use a RPi2 or similar device as a thin client.

 

[drmike]

Bonus points: Copy desktop/VM to a remote data center and use a RPi2 or similar device as a thin client.

All eyes and ears for this.  Is this something you are doing with a Linux desktop and Linux remote DC server?

 

[KuJoe]

All eyes and ears for this.  Is this something you are doing with a Linux desktop and Linux remote DC server?

I've got some Windows 7 and Windows 10 VPSs in a few different locations and I use my ODroid C1 (Ubuntu 14.04) with Remmina to RDP to them. My furthest VPS is running Windows 10 and is 31ms away but it's still an extremely smooth experience (I'm typing this reply from it right now with my C1 as the client). I have the C1 wired to my network right now but I'll give wireless a try also. In my previous tests the RPi2 had a better RDP experience but this is my first time using Remmina for RDP and I honestly don't think it could get any better than this (it even looks better than connecting to my Windows 7 desktop on the same network). Browsing with Chrome is also much faster over RDP than it is using the local install on the C1 itself.


I'll play around over the next few days and build some different VPSs in other data centers with both Windows and Linux desktop OSes and take some screenshots and videos of the results. I wish I could use my RPi2 also to compare against but it's in use right now and I haven't gotten around to ordering another one.


EDIT: I just noticed that I'm running at 1920x1080 also which is nice. I thought it would scale down the resolution but it didn't.


EDIT2: It looks like I can only connect to Windows 7 and Windows 10 VPSs. Server 2008 R2 won't display any icons/images, only text and outlines no matter what color depth I put it at. Windows 7 only works with 32bpp and Windows 10 only works with 24bpp, but for me the lower the better as long as it's about 8bpp.