virtualbox.org

Hosting Windows 7 32-Bit: 3.21GB
Guest Server 2012 R2: 2GB

I can get as far as the initial setup page for 2012 R2 before getting warning messages about an unsupported pointer and then finally a crash. Absolutely new to virtualization and trying to test out 2012 R2 before deployment.

00:00:02.368036 Host RAM: 3291MB total, 1386MB available
00:00:02.697106 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000080000000 (2 147 483 648, 2 048 MB)

00:01:26.341867 VM: Raising runtime error 'HostMemoryLow' (fFlags=0x2)

Memory over-commit.

Ah. Gotcha.

Figured it out, system is running now. But I can't install the evaluation version of 2012 due to it requiring a CD key. From random searching it seems this is a problem tied to using a virtual host for the installation. I saw others were able to do it with some modification to their hypervisor (VMware's Workstation it seems), but so far have been unable to find the right steps to have the evaluation copy quit asking for a CD key--and it's a trial, so it shouldn't.

You absolutely need to register any trial version of Microsoft software and we do not try to work around that as it would be against the ULA.