JDPFu.com 2025

Last week, I setup and configured a special desktop for the accounting system for the company. Basically, it is a Windows7 Pro desktop running under ESXi 4 that the folks responsible for accounting remote (RDP) into after connecting via VPN to the special network for it. We’re small and only a few people even need access – never more than 1 at a time.

It was fairly painless to setup, install Accounting, load Payroll CD, then validate remote VPN access (which is never trivial), then setup daily backup jobs. Of course, AV, automatic patchs and nasty IE settings were configured too. Each daily backup set is about 250MB, which isn’t too bad, but more than I would have thought given the machine is idle most of the time and won’t be used more than 3 days a month. These backups are Microsoft VHD files using the built-in backup, which could be useful, but I’d rather have a complete VDMK, VDI, or Xen img file to restore.

Of course, it isn’t possible to connect to this VM without going through our VPN.

Next I need to perform a test restore to another machine under some virtualization tool that we use. Yeah, I know with the VHD, I can perform a restore someplace else, but with the VM-image file, I just point a hypervisor at it and go. Now that VirtualBox supports VMware, vdmk, files, this test really should be trivial. If it goes well, I’ll take my WinXP (MS-Office, Visio and other WinXP-only tools VM) and put it under a server-based VM too. It will be better to not travel with that stuff on my laptop anyway.