So. What's so good about Win7 XP Mode?

In an earlier posting I extolled the virtues ofusing the inbuilt Win7 virtual PC, XP Mode implementation as a way of managing the user space. This post serves to explain what XP mode offers.

Microsoft has included a free virtual machine, running Windows XP, for the Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate versions.

What is a Windows XP Mode? XP Mode is a way of allowing you to run multiple Windows environments from your Windows 7 desktop. It does this by using a Virtual Machine, which is, in fact, a copy of Windows XP running at the same time as Windows 7. This Windows XP looks, acts and feels exactly the same as does a copy Windows XP running on its own PC without Win7.

Why? This is done primarily in order to offer a way of supporting applications which run on XP but don’t run on Win7. This, in turn, means that you can continue running your old versions of software until such time as there is a good business reason to spend on upgrading.

A second and perhaps more important advantage, is that users can continue operating using the same comfortable screen look and feel. No new learning curve!

So why not just continue with Windows XP? The two most obvious answers are that new PC’s will be only supplied with Win7 and the other is that Microsoft is now only offering minimal support for Windows XP. By supplying XP Mode as part of Win7, one gets the best of both worlds; the choice of the XP or Win7 interfaces.

But wait, there’s more!

XP Mode integrates tightly with Win7 and apps installed on the XP machine are directly accessible from Win7. The apps can even be pinned to the start menu in the same way as any Win7 app! And you can choose which disk mappings are propagated from the Win7 PC to XP Mode, where the mappings can be used transparently, in addition to mappings unique to XP Mode. All of which provides huge opportunities for customization!

If you haven’t looked at Win7 yet, now’s the time to do it.

Why you should be looking at Windows 7 XP Mode

So, the latest buzz is desktop virtualisation. And it's all about how to run your thousands of desktops on a few virtualised servers located in your data centre and how much you are going to save. Really?  Are you?

Is replacing your cheap desktop disk by a hugely expensive SAN datastore really going to save anything?  Then, of course, there's the performance hit your poor datastore is going to suffer when hit by thousands of desktops rather than the few servers it was designed for! Which probably means that it had better be divorced from the SAN datastore you use for your servers, so now you need two SANs. Is it still going to save you?

Maybe desktop virtualisation needs to be looked at from a totally different point of view.

Maybe retaining your desktops and running Win7 is a better way to go? Maybe we can make a really good business case out of using the XP virtual machine which is built in to Win7 pro.

The big problem with the thousands of desktops is that of management. In particular it's a real pain maintaining those specialised apps needed by the business. It's of no consequence bemoaning the fact that they are badly designed and written; nobody is interested in your carping. What you've have is what you live with.

But wait, if you only needed maintaining a few desktops would life still be so bad? You can easily cope with the weird requirements needed by the apps if you only have maintain a single desktop. And with Win7 that wish is easily implemented!

The answer is to build an XP virtual machine which answers the business's requirements and then to run a copy of that virtual machine at each desktop. By so doing, you need only maintain a single desktop no matter how many times it is used. 

And it just gets better!  Because your users are living in a virtual machine rather than a native one, the implementation is completely divorced from hardware dependence.  The solution is a virtual machine, which means that all users run on the same hardware platform; irrespective of chipset, make and model of workstation upon which is actually deployed - you have achieved total hardware independence! It's even exactly the same platform for your developers and your QA site.  No more surprises!  NOW we are talking REAL savings!!!

And then there's even more! By starting with the same basic virtual machine, you can build the special variations which are required by specific departments.  OK, so now there's more than one version to maintain, but it definitely isn't the thousands you had before moving to this paradigm.

And roll out is simply a matter of copying a few files.  No installation.  Rollback?  Yup, just copy the old files back or rename a folder or two.  Like the man says:  'Easy peasy'.  And inexpensive!

Now isn't this a better way to go?