Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: cpuid problem in upstream qemu with kvm

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 12/22/2009 11:56 PM, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Are you joking?  Even as a casual users, when would you ever run
> Windows without networking these days???!  I don't think you can even
> buy a computer without networking any more:-)

Probably not. :)

> Or do you mean something else by "networked images" in a company context?

"Networked images"---not "networked VMs".  I meant "placing lots of 
images on a shared file server", so that people can use them from many 
different workstations; I think Alexander Graf mentioned this scenario 
earlier.  In that case, people would run the images from different CPU 
and possibly play with adding and removing network cards etc., so 
reactivations would be relatively common (I definitely have to deal with 
them every other week, but luckily I do have MSDN...).

> Fwiw, when I have done Windows migrations for companies, they never
> have MSDN subscriptions (and neither do I:-)  They have purchased
> Windows with the machines, and later they want to migrate those
> machines into VMs.

In this case I would expect the reactivation to be needed the first time 
anyway, because the graphics card, CPU and maybe network card are 
changing at the same time (do they still sell Cirrus Logic VGAs?  I had 
one ten years ago...).  But once you're in a VM and your network 
settings are finalized, you shouldn't get reactivation anymore.

Paolo