Virtual machines as localization testbenches

What are you doing for localized testbenches? Are you still partitioning hard drives or, worse yet, dedicating entire machines to one language-platform? Lab getting a bit crowded and hot, is it? Consider using virtual machines, or VMs.

Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 is free and uncrippled, so you can create, run and administer your own VMs. It's not bad software, and you can be sure that if there are any "special" tricks a VM should know about the Windows-version hosting it, this product will know them. VMWare's product is not free, but features a VM player, so if somebody in your department has the full product and can create VMs for you, you can use them as you would a normal drive.

A VM is just a huge file (around 1GB for Windows 2000, 3GB for Windows XP, 6GB for Vista) that you mount and run as a "guest" session in its own window. It's like having a computer inside a computer, although it takes away drive space, RAM and processor cycles that the "host" system - the one your computer runs normally - used to use. You can start and stop the VMs as you need them, and you can install almost any OS or language to run as a guest inside the VM; however, you do need to procure a legal copy of that OS/language combination.

Tiring of so much ancient kit lying around the lab, we've begun to migrate to VMs. They're not a panacea, but they make things like remote testing a good deal easier, they require less hardware, and they make dual-boot configurations irrelevant. There's quite a performance hit, unfortunately, and we're finding that VMWare VMs are a bit more responsive than Microsoft's.
However, most localization testing is focused on UI and functionality rather than on performance, so this may not affect your lab unduly.

Creating one is not that difficult. Here's an example for Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007:

1. Obtain a machine with about 2GB of RAM and at least 80GB of drive space, running, say Windows XP English.
2. Download and install MS Virtual PC 2007.
3. Create a virtual machine, specifying Windows XP. For installation, give the VM 1GB of RAM; you can reduce that amount later if need be.
4. Obtain the installation disk for the desired OS (e.g., Windows XP Japanese) and place it in the drive.
5. Start the VM. As it opens in its new window, specify that you want to capture the CD drive (or the image file on the host machine, if you're mounting a .img).
6. Installation will then take place as normal, with disk checking, file copying, and all the configuration and rebooting you would expect of an installation on a physical drive.
7. A few GB later, you have a WinXP Japanese VM running as a guest on your Win XP English host. Install the Virtual Disk Additions to enable features like host-to-guest drag-and-drop.

Of note:

1. Your VMs don't inherit domain information from the host machine, so if you want the VMs on the domain for things like advertised programs and SMS pushes, you'll need to arrange that separately with the network administrator.
2. They just get bigger. There is a feature to "compact" the VMs, but the resulting file takes no less space on disk.
3. Migrating from existing physical drives into a VM is a crapshoot. Our most wildly successful experimentation has resulted in Blue Screen of Death, so don't expect to take an existing testbench and copy it into a new VM, any more than you would expect it to work going from a desktop to a laptop physical machine.
4. There's an emulation layer between the VM and the hardware, so peripherals (USB devices, dongles) may not run the same way as they do on a physical drive.
5. VMs are portable, so if you can get one to run on your desktop, you should be able to copy it to other computers and use it on them. For that matter, VMWare VMs can be hosted on servers and run remotely.