Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

If like me you travel around a lot and are pretty busy finding the time to get a new laptop setup with all of the data and non-standard build software you require can be a time-consuming chore.

More often than not you will be upgrading to a new more powerful machine with larger disks (unless you are unlucky :)) rather than carrying around two laptops on a trip or risking going without a particular ready to go application why not consider P2V’ing your old laptop onto your new one?

I am doing just this at the moment, I got my new laptop before I had to head out for a couple of days, VMware Converter is a free download and it took me about 3hrs with a cross-over ethernet cable this evening to P2V my old Dell laptop into a virtual machine on my new HP one. and I can now transfer my data and re-install my own applications into the host OS at my leisure; as a side advantage I instantly get the benefits of a machine with a faster CPU and better screen resolution without having to mess around with the software build or “personalisation”.

VMware Player is also free and you can use a VM in full screen mode, Player even supports Unity mode – this could be a viable long-term solution if it weren’t for the licensing position of having to maintain 2 x OS licenses (guest and host).

Performance is also pretty good – my VM’d laptop gets a 2.9 performance score in Vista – with the video being the lowest score.

Before (physical Dell D620, 2GHz Dual Core Intel, 4Gb, 200Gb, c.3yrs old)

After VM running under VMware Player on an HP EliteBook, 2.8GHz Dual Core Intel, 8Gb RAM, 250Gb HDD

And, for comparison on the native hardware of the new HP Laptop

Keep it in mind next time you switch…