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I am wondering if anyone has successfully ran any virtual windows7(or vista) OS's on their linux ec2 instance. We're getting a high memory large instance and I have one user who wants to run a .net app that needs some heavy cpu at times but other wise will won't be active(its basically the boss's trading optimizer).

I'm sort of in the a bind because all of our system apps run in linux. So I wanted to create a windows7 VM within the linux OS. I got this to work with qemu but the performance was pretty bad because apparently qemu only supports one cpu per os.

I'm wondering if people could share experiences installing these types of software(virtualbox, qemu, vmware, etc.) in the cloud? My requirements is it should be able to use multiple cpus(so we need okay performance..doesn't have to be mind blowing fast but not 10 minutes to open internet explorer like it currently is with only one cpu) and should run within linux. We're willing to purchase a tool if one works so it doesn't have to be open source.

Thanks for sharing your experiences

user9517
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Lostsoul
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    I'm sorry if I missed this, but--why do you want to run Windows 7 within a Linux EC2 instance? Why not just launch a Windows-based EC2 instance? – Andrew M. Mar 28 '11 at 03:38
  • Thanks for the reply, Redmumba. Its a weird situation. We are setting up a server for our production jobs and my boss just told me that the big boss wants to run this app on on the server instead of running it for 3-4 days straight on his computer. I can't pitch to him to get another server or do it elsewhere, so I'm trying to set it up where he gets okay performance(doesn't have to be amazing) and doesn't impact the rest of the systems(so if controls can be placed on how much memory/cpu it takes it would be good). I know this is trouble but I'm being told to just get it done. – Lostsoul Mar 28 '11 at 03:46
  • So you're saying you have an existing Linux instance up and running, and you're not able to launch a new, Windows-based instance due to business limitations? If not, any Windows operating system [can be made into an AMI](http://serverfault.com/questions/129974/custom-windows-ami-for-amazon-ec2). – Andrew M. Mar 28 '11 at 03:56
  • Thanks for the link, Redmumba. For "political" reasons I am being told I can't tell the head of the firm better ideas..he knows we're building a server and wants to run his app on our server(he thinks it'll help without inuring costs). My suggestion was to get a small instance with windows and not use our extra-large high mem instance..I was told that I can't present that as a solution. So i'm in a bit of a bind..I need to run our jobs on this linux box(we're building one) but I have to put his app on it also. I just need to make sure he doesn't complain and it doesn't crash my prod jobs – Lostsoul Mar 28 '11 at 04:03
  • I have basically spent the entire weekend testing out different types of software to get this done that work on ec2 and am not sure which one to use. My boss told me, we can buy commercial software to do this provided it works on ec2(vmware, parallels), we basically just need something working... – Lostsoul Mar 28 '11 at 04:07
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    If they're willing to buy extra software, why not just sell the windows instance to them as being extra software? I'm playing around with windows server 2008 core on a c1.medium and it seems snappy enough. You can even only start it up when needed... – Decado Mar 28 '11 at 07:31
  • To me this makes perfect sense..but this direction is not being set by people who actually understand technology..its from the business guys above the tech team who see extra server power and notice their trading applications are taking long and want to use the power. Their logic is they're paying for it so why not use it during off hours when server load isn't high. I'm kind of stuck trying to figure out how to set this up. fyi..we're not even a trading company..this is personal tool for the firms founder. – Lostsoul Mar 29 '11 at 07:52
  • Hmmm ... I am wondering if they think "server" means all of EC2. Not just your specific instance. You could pitch it by saying, "I found software, it will cost [the price of a new EC2 instance]." – Joseph Kern Mar 30 '11 at 23:48
  • Thanks Joseph, I think this is an interesting question for testing but the way we handled this in the office was to suggest because our server was running simple apps and a database, it wouldn't be powerful enough for the owners needs, so he's better getting the highest level windows instance(I think its the extra large high cpu one)..I'm not totally in the clear yet though..his backend will use our database but other then some space provision, I don't think we need to make any software/setup changes. – Lostsoul Mar 31 '11 at 00:11

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Any type of virtualization running on top of an AWS instance will have poor performance as it will not be able to make use of the virtualization instructions of the CPU since the instance itself is a VM.

This is possible to run but there isn't a good solution for increasing the performance since it's a VM on a VM.

Nathan V
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