Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

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emil78
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Joined: 15. Jun 2012, 11:28

Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by emil78 »

Can your run Windows 7 guest machine headless and connect to it over RDP? Will this have any benefits - like, reducing the load over the host operating system?
mpack
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Re: Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by mpack »

The VM is running Windows 7, so you can do anything with it that you can with any other Win7 PC - hardware permitting. And since the only hardware RDP requires is a network connection, then yes of course you can run and connect to it using RDP.

On the headless part of the question: all VMs can be run headless.

Reducing the load? I wouldn't expect anything measureable from that. What kind of load were you thinking of that this would reduce?

The main benefit would be in allowing the VM to be efficiently used in other ways. Say if you wanted a VM to be a full actor on your local network, let's say running PiHole or similar, without cluttering up the display on the host PC: then this can be a good solution, if you don't want to buy a second hand mini PC and run your app full time on that.

But why Win7? If it's going to be on your network all the time, especially if it has an Internet connection, then I'd have thought that something more fully up to date would be safer and more functional too.
emil78
Posts: 112
Joined: 15. Jun 2012, 11:28

Re: Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by emil78 »

mpack wrote: But why Win7?
Because i am using linux as my host os and i want to be able to run some programs for Windows that won't run on wine. But some programs put heavy load on the Windows VM so i though if i run the vm headless this could reduce the load on the host machine.
mpack
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Re: Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by mpack »

emil78 wrote:But some programs put heavy load on the Windows VM so i though if i run the vm headless this could reduce the load on the host machine.
Theoretically the display "hardware" would be different (everything else would be the same). But AFAICS, "different" doesn't necessarily mean faster, or reduced load. A well specced Windows VM should use a couple of percent of one core when fully idle. There isn't much room left for performance benefits there. If, instead of idle, you assume an app that uses x% of CPU then it will probably continue to do so regardless of what display hardware is attached. If running headless means that it does software rendering to a background display then it could conceivably have a higher overhead.

Tell you what: maybe you should just try it and see. Personally I wouldn't expect much change.
emil78
Posts: 112
Joined: 15. Jun 2012, 11:28

Re: Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by emil78 »

Is it possible to setup gpu passthrough from my MX Linux host to Windows 7 guest?
scottgus1
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Re: Can your run Windows 7 guest headless?

Post by scottgus1 »

No. PCI passthrough (not AGP or PCIe, so modern video cards couldn't have used it anyway) was removed some time ago, and the only forum guru to make it work, PerryG, said it was little to no benefit.

So the VM will only ever be able to use the Virtualbox video card. The only video acceleration available is 3D acceleration, which requires Guest Additions in the VM.
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