make console screen available when vm is powered off & addevirtual power buttons

[roland]

also see my posting in the german forum for this: ​http://www.virtualbox.org/discussion/2/663

i think having access to the console of a vm via rdp is a great feature.

it would be even more great (very nice for VDI, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure -> ​http://www.vmware.com/partners/vdi.html) , if rdp access would not only be available if the VM is being powerdt on, but also when it is powered off - i.e. don't get disconnected when VM reboots/powers down.

the real killer here would be some feature, to add virtual power buttogns to that virtual rdp screen - so that after the admin adding a vm and "enabling the desktop" , the user could power on, suspend, reset, stop his own VM just via rdp - without any additional tools.

comments ?

[Klaus Espenlaub]

In principle that would be possible. Currently there is no process running for a powered down VM, and the RDP server is also explicitly shut down when a VM is powered down.

But it might be a good idea to provide a way to start a VM with VBoxVRDP in powered down state (and keep VBoxVRDP running, if a VM is powered down), including leaving the RDP server running.

[roland]

there is a "competing" request at ​http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=664532&tstart=0

i´m curious if virtualbox will be the first virtualization solution with this feature ;)

not sure if priority should be remain "minor", though.

if this would be implemented, virtualbox would probably get some significant notice from VDI "consortium". other virtualization vendors would have a hard time to beat this.

i`m not sure if this is so hard to implement - especially because rdp support is already there.....

[roland]

just an idea how this could look like - just made some fake-screenshot for vmware and thought that it would be useful here for explanation, too: ​http://www.computerkeek.de/vmware/vdi-rdp.png

[Achim Hasenmueller]

This is being worked on.

You cannot compare our solution to VMware VDI where all they do is turn on the RDP server of Windows XP/Vista. Pretty lame IMHO :)

[roland]

oh, nice to hear - thanks for telling!

You cannot compare our solution to VMware VDI where all they do is turn on the RDP server of Windows XP/Vista.

do you know of VDI concepts or dedicated solutions doing this different? im not that deep into VDI, but for what i know about all the VDI stuff and fuzz is about XP/Vistas builtin RDP capability. so that concept is somewhat "undercooked".

maybe innotek is the first making this going to be "well-done" :D

Pretty lame IMHO :)

Yes, absolutely !

[Achim Hasenmueller]

We've invented and deployed what VMware calls "VDI" in 2001.

Note that USB over RDP is also unique to VirtualBox.

[roland]

i`m beginning to realize that i have highly underestimated virtualbox/innotek.

:)

[roland]

This is being worked on.

if you like somebody to test this at a beta/development stage, please keep me informed or tell me what url i need to poll to get bleeding edge builds of virtualbox

[roland]

any news on this?

is this feature available in 11/2009 ?

i have not yet seen any virtualization software where you could power on your own desktop via rdp ;)