Win 10 + hypervisor?

New, well very new, kid here; trying to find a way to run two copies of Win 10 concurrently on one desktop. Both copies are legal, licensed, paid for installations. The intent is to use one keyboard, one mouse, an array of monitors virtually assigned to one or the other Win 10 session, and at the interface to the outside world, two unique internet IP addresses - all of this to see if the fuss is worth it - or buy a 2nd desktop. Issue is, I have no idea even where to start, but I figured if anyone would know, it would be Microsoft enthusiasts. If nothing else, direction(s) to a relevant forum or other discussion would be perfect! Thanks for any tips!

Augustus

Win 10 version 2004

Welcome to TenForums.

Take a look at this tutorial. This should get you started.

Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10

augustus said:

New, well very new, kid here; trying to find a way to run two copies of Win 10 concurrently on one desktop. Both copies are legal, licensed, paid for installations. The intent is to use one keyboard, one mouse, an array of monitors virtually assigned to one or the other Win 10 session, and at the interface to the outside world, two unique internet IP addresses - all of this to see if the fuss is worth it - or buy a 2nd desktop. Issue is, I have no idea even where to start, but I figured if anyone would know, it would be Microsoft enthusiasts. If nothing else, direction(s) to a relevant forum or other discussion would be perfect! Thanks for any tips!

Augustus

Win 10 version 2004

I would look at ESXi hypervisor to host your Windows 10 VMs. I have not used it, though, so I really don't know much about it. But it sounds like what you want is a bare metal type I hypervisor. I think the biggest problem you are going to have is that most bare metal type I hypervisors are probably going to be looking for server hardware.

augustus said:

New, well very new, kid here; trying to find a way to run two copies of Win 10 concurrently on one desktop. Both copies are legal, licensed, paid for installations. The intent is to use one keyboard, one mouse, an array of monitors virtually assigned to one or the other Win 10 session, and at the interface to the outside world, two unique internet IP addresses - all of this to see if the fuss is worth it - or buy a 2nd desktop. Issue is, I have no idea even where to start, but I figured if anyone would know, it would be Microsoft enthusiasts. If nothing else, direction(s) to a relevant forum or other discussion would be perfect! Thanks for any tips!

Unfortunately, that's just not how virtualization works. There are two kinds of virtualization, hypervisors and applications... applications run a window on your desktop, just like a remote desktop client window.. Your one keyboard, mouse, and host monitor(s) are shared between each virtual machine running in a window on your desktop. You must switch between them, and while they may run simultaneously your input is limited to whatever the active window is. It's possible to connect multiple keyboards and mice, but they all share the common input queue of the host machine.

Hypervisors run as services in the background without any required UI. Often (as is the case in WIndows) there is a user mode application used to access the VM, and it looks sort of like the application based VM's, but in reality it's entirely different.

In theory, you can have multiple keyboards, monitors, etc.. but they each must be connected to a different PC, which then connects over the network to your hosted VM. This doesn't give you the situation you're looking for.

What you describe is a multi-user system, which Windows is generally not... It has multi-user capabilities, but they require separate UI devices to facilitate.. for instance, using a Terminal Server based system... you can get by with a small remote access device that isn't a full PC, but you can't just hook up multiple monitors and multiple keyboards and make them work.

There was a special "education" version of Windows a while back (not sure if there's still a sku for it, that purported to do this, but it wasn't virtual machines... regardless, it just doesn't work the way you think it does.

To add to the confusion, there is a product called Windows 10 multi-user... but it's really just a terminal services based system... more about that here... Is Windows 10 multi-user a step in the right direction? (algiz-technology.com)

Again, it requires a separate device running a remote desktop client to use.

augustus, I encourage you to setup Windows in Hyper-V just to get a feel for what its capabilities and where it may meet your needs or where it may be lacking.

With a VM you would indeed have a complete seperate installation of Windows that will run alongside your existing installation of Windows and it will meet the criteria of having a completely seperate IP address and identity on the network.

While you can't necessarily assign one monitor for exclusive use, you could run it full screen on one monitor to come pretty close to emulating that setup.

Again, try it out - if nothing else you will at least have learned something and will have a new tool in your bag of tricks that you will have a pretty good feel for at least as it relates to when it will or won't be appropriate for your needs.

I have a tendency to run multiple VMs at once, sometimes even Hyper-V and VMware workstation VMs at the same time, and for me, VMs have become an absolute necessary part of my daily workflow.

Good point! Using a hypervisor like ESXi, you can't log into the Windows running in a VM from the host computer itself.

augustus said:

New, well very new, kid here; trying to find a way to run two copies of Win 10 concurrently on one desktop. Both copies are legal, licensed, paid for installations. The intent is to use one keyboard, one mouse, an array of monitors virtually assigned to one or the other Win 10 session, and at the interface to the outside world, two unique internet IP addresses - all of this to see if the fuss is worth it - or buy a 2nd desktop. Issue is, I have no idea even where to start, but I figured if anyone would know, it would be Microsoft enthusiasts. If nothing else, direction(s) to a relevant forum or other discussion would be perfect! Thanks for any tips!

Augustus

Win 10 version 2004

Augustus,

What is it that you are trying to accomplish with having 2 Windows 10 machines? I use a host of virtual machines at home, so I get the point of virtualization. I often install a new version of Windows (like 20h2 ) in a VM, see what is new, what has changed, etc. I also install labs where i might be testing out an application or learning a new technology for work.

If you have WIndows 10 Pro, you have access to HyperV, which is a Type 1 hypervisor. With Hyper-V, you install Windows 10 on your local hardware. Once it's running, you enable to the HyperV feature, and then you can install a variety of virtual machines within your running Windows 10 machine. So, maybe you install a couple Windows 10 boxes, and a Windows Server 2019 box to try playing with Active Directory.

Each Virtual machine, is a standalone machine, that act independently from each other. However, they would run in a window, so you would have 3 windows open if you were running my above example where you had 1 window for server 2019, and 1 window for each of the windows 10 clients.

With MIcrosoft, you can get trial versions of all of this software, so you don't even need a license. For example, WIndows server runs for 180 days on the trial. So, you get 6 months to play and screw around with it. You can always reinstall it at any point during that timeframe and the timer starts at 180 days ago. For the Windows 10 clients, WIndows 10 enterprise is only a 90 day trial, so you end up reinstallingthat one just a bit more.

Hi folks
I'd install any Linux OS as HOST (very small OS if you don't install a GUI) and then install your Windows VM's on KVM/QEMU -- you can install the whole thing including managing the VM's from the command line but you then have the problem of accessing the VM's while on the HOST machine.

If you install a GUI then you can also use the virtual machine manager and can logon to windows VM's from the HOST using xrdp/freerdp/rdesktop/krdc etc depending on what window manager you use as a GUI. My screenshot is Arch Linux with kernel 5.10.9 using KDE-Plasma as window manager. I've had 6 or 7 VM's running concurrently without any problems. I like to test various versions of the latest Windows 10 builds and don't want to keep messing around on a physical machine for each build.

KVM like HYPER-V enables also pass-thru of things like graphics cards etc (if you have the hardware - and IOMMU enabled) so you can get almost native performance if you want to test out gaming video stuff.

The KVM /QEMU hypervisor on a Linux system will have a lot less overhead than running a host Windows OS plus Windows VM's.

Using a server version of Windows is fine as well but it's expensve if you don't want to keep re-installing new trial versions --Linux is FREE !!!!



BTW KVM/QEMU also allows concurrent operation of VM's on VMWARE Workstation / player and VBOX. Not sure if HYPER-V does yet.

Cheers
jimbo