I do the sysadmin at my work; it's a small business. Currently it has Windows Server 2008 installed on it and I think that it may need to upgrade to 2008 R2. However it is the the production server so I need to tread carefully.

I was thinking about how easier it would be to have Linux installed on it and running a virtual machine of the Windows Server inside it. If I try and tweak the system and it becomes unstable then I could just copy the backup image onto the production image and the damage would be undone. The Linux system would only be interfaced locally; no ssh or anything. Also, by using Linux, we would have access to the Linux tools (like rsync) and host virtual hard drives remotely (Windows Server Backup does not do incremental backups to remote locations).

I was wondering whether this is a good idea and whether anyone does this? How much of a performance hit would it be to run a server VM? Are there licencing issues?

Also, what is the performance hit (in your experience) to run workstation VMs? Can they access the 3D acceleration hardware if they run 3D software?

The licensing for VMWare may not be something your work will like, but it does come with decent support I think.

The problem with the other solutions is lack of support, and in KVM's case, its really crap at running windows sadly. I'd have suggested KVM otherwise.

Performance hit on a decent paravirtualized system is pretty low, like 10%. There are ways to allow access to a graphics card, but typically you need hardware support for that to work properly, and its not cheap.

You can run VirtualBox as a daemon, I've not done it myself, and I'm not sure its the best idea, but it could work.

The VirtualBox base package is free and I am under the impression that it is quite stable.

What do you think is wrong with the idea?

I think it's the fact it wasn't designed to run that way.

What's the bitness of your Server 2008? If you're 64bit, then you can just install Hyper-V and run the VM through that.

(Also you must not be pre-RTM Server 2008, which I just assume you aren't.)

No one runs jailed operating systems like that (i.e. not just for testing)?

I meant the VirtualBox as a daemon. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it was designed in a way that it's a bit of a mess doing it.

I would've thought that doing this would be way more common -- it would allow testing and production on the same hardware without buying the extra hardware (the production server couldn't be resource-intensive or being required to be always on).

I'm interested in the outcome of your adventures.

I thought that the hardware was presented to the virtual machine as very generic, and the only hardware compatibility that one should usually concern themselves with is making sure that VMWare itself can interface with your hardware.

VirtualBox is a desktop virtualization solution. It doesn't make using it as a server as easy as using it as a regular desktop app.