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virtualization - Starting VM as an executable with as low overhead as possible

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Is there a solution to
create a virtual machine and start it by having an executable file, that will start the
machine? If possible to start as quickly as possible. Strange situation?
Not at all. Read on...



Real life
scenario



Since we can't have domain controller
on a non-server OS it would be nice to have domain controller in an as thin as possible
machine (possibly Samba or similar because we'd like to make it startup as quickly as
possible - in a matter of a few seconds) packed in a single executable. We could then
configure our non-server OS to run the executable when it starts and before user logs
in. This would make it possible to login into a
domain.



Actual situation
info




For some peculiar reasons I
want to run non-server OS at all costs. It's a Windows 7 x64 Enterprise OS. It's a
development machine not connected to any domain. It's a standalone machine. I need to
set it up for Sharepoint Server 2010 development. So I'm installing Sharepoint. With
some workarounds it's possible to make it work with local accounts but every account
mangling has to be done manually which I don't like at all. So DC (or similar) becomes
a must.
That is the main reason I'd like to have some
sort of a domain controller with domain users defined, so I'd be able to run Sharepoint
as close to production environment as possible. Virtualising DC seems like the best
option and to make it as transparent as possible I wanted DC to initialise before I even
logon to my Win7 dev machine. I'd logon using some domain user account then. />Virtualised DC needs to run all the time, because I will be developing/debugging my
solution all the time, meaning I'll be authenticating users on Sharepoint level most of
the time. So it's not just a one time startup and shutdown after my app runs. />I was also thinking of installing ESXi on baremetal and setting up two VMs. One
Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core with AD role (assigning it
minimum RAM to run) and my actual development environment machine, but I haven't worked
with ESXi before and I don't know whether my VM will run close to normal speed or not.
My development VM must be fast just as if it was installed
on baremetal HW (or close to it).
Another thing is that Sharepoint services
start on OS boot. And they use domain users to run. That's why I'd like my DC VM to
startup as soon as possible. ESXi could be my answer if my dev machine will run as
expected.





BTW: I use VMWare Workstation 7 and not Server,
because I do run some VM occasionally that need USB as well. Workstation works flawlesly
in this regard. But I haven't checked if it's possible to start a VM with Workstation on
OS boot...



class="post-text" itemprop="text">
class="normal">Answer



You're
trying to have a pseudo-VM triggered by running a particular application? The licensing,
technological, and security issues involved would make this a staggering feat compared
to actually buying a cheap computer and networking it to your system and actually
running a domain controller.



Your best bet is to
actually get an inexpensive system and run it as a DC with a legal version of Windows
Server, unless you can get Samba to use the necessary services. There's no way you could
spin up a domain controller, virtualized, within seconds, even with Citrix or VMWare's
packaging virtual-apps (I forget what they call that product).



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