This weeks question of the week come from these two questions:

• Windows 8 Hyper-V – how to give VM internet access?

• How do I install and use Window Virtual PC in Windows 8?

One of them asked by Graham Clark, and the other is a self post by myself.  This prompted me to do a more formal review of Microsoft’s Hyper-V for Windows 8.

What is Hyper-V for Windows 8?

Hyper-V for Windows 8 is really called Client Hyper-V.  It’s similar in many aspects to the Microsoft Server’s Hyper-V (2008 and the upcoming 2012).  What’s different about Client Hyper-V is that it was customized to fit the portable environments, such as laptops, that developer’s find themselves in.  What does Hyper-V do?

In brief, Hyper-V lets you run more than one 32-bit or 64-bit x86 operating system at the same time on the same computer. Instead of working directly with the computer’s hardware, the operating systems run inside of a virtual machine (VM).

(source)

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It’s time for our Question of the Week. This time, Jacob Hayden asked:

Why is there so much hype about Virtualization these days?

Virtual machine, Virtual server, Virtual disk, etc…… It doesn’t make much sense to me why someone would want to make their things “virtual” when basically that adds another layer to everything (which in most cases will make it run more slow). What’s the purpose of Virtualization in the multiple cases above?

While this sounds like a very subjective question, it gained quite some attention. Our long-term user William Hilsum added a great answer, explaining what virtualization even is, and how it became so useful these days.

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I have often had to answer questions on setting up advanced networking with VirtualBox.  The most common ones are along the lines of:

Connecting to a VirtualBox machine from the host, using an ip address

and others of a similar ilk.

Well, let’s delve into the mysteries of VirtualBox’s networking (and networking in general) to unravel the secrets behind setting it all up right.

VirtualBox has 4 basic types of network available:

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