Virtualizing Media Center on Windows Home Server

I have seen a few people try running Windows Home Server as a virtual machine on Windows Vista as a way of combining WHS and Media Center together (with limited success) but I haven’t seen it done ther other way round. Andrew Grant posted about running Vista Media Center on Windows Home Server using VMware and since VMware supports USB devices Vista Media Center can use a USB based tuner. This approach has some advantages like being able to use Windows Home Server drive architecture for expanding and mirroring folders but there are some limitations such as only working with USB tuners, needing extenders to watch TV and the Home Server needs sufficient power to run a virtualised session of Vista

Read the post for all the details of how it works, I think I will stick with two boxes for now but it’s a very interesting project

My feeling is this setup is absolutely workable, and could work very well, but the spec of the host machine is likely to require more than the MediaSmart Server hardware can support.

Since my whole purpose was minimizing the footprint of both machines instead of switching back to a large form-factor server I’m more likely to purchase a dedicated machine such as a Dell Studio Hybrid or Mac Mini for Media Center purposes, then have it record to a network share. These are avenues I’ll probably explore in the new year.