Virtual Machine Technology is like having a computer inside a computer. It allows you to work with applications, create networks, write code in the .NET environment, trouble shoot applications, all in a sandbox environment.  Here the virtual machine and its operations are kept separate from the core-host machine. If the virtual machine blows up, the host machine is unphased.

Virtual Machine technology allows businesses to have multiple servers on one main server. Suppose a company needed to have a mail-exchange server, a database server running Oracle, and another running Sql server 2005, another server running financial software and one or two servers running manufacturing and engineering software. This could get very expensive. The company would have to purchase the hardware and the software. But by having a virtual machine environment, instead of having to purchase 4 or 5 computer-servers, each costing between 7 and 10 thousand dollars, a company only needs to buy one. That server would be loaded up with RAM and Multi-Core processors to handle the operations of several different virtual machines. Indeed the server may well cost upwards of 15,000 dollars. Still this would be a lot less than spending 40 to 60 thousand dollars on hardware. Now, the company only needs to buy one server, and the software to run on each virtual machine.

This is the way of the future and Windows 7 offers an opportunity to do this.
Once you have Windows 7 in place,  Download the Virtual PC  2007 Progarm from Microsoft.

Virtual PC 2007

Follow the defaults that come with the wizard.

Choose The Correct Architecture

Make sure you use the correct version for your computer, 32 bit or 64.

Selecting The 64 Bit Version

Welcome To The Installation Wizard

Microsoft Software License Terms

Customer Information

Ready To Install Program

Installing MS-Virtual PC

Installation Complete

MS VirtualPC

Virtual PC Console

Having installed the virtual PC Console then one must add the VM to the console and run it. That will be the topic of the next post, How to Install a Virtual Machine.

Source:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

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