realskiers

Installing the virtual software on the host is straightforward, same as installing any other software.?
Creating a new virtual machine is equally simple, you tell the new virtual machine to boot off the CD and it's just like booting on real hardware.
Networking options are pretty much the same as you have now, the Virtual Monitor manages the network card and virtualizes it to the virtual machines so that each thinks it has a real network card.

However, at least with VMWare you also have the option of "migrating" an existing hardware system to a virtual machine host.? You don't have to reload or rebuild anything, it just moves it to the new host platform.

The program Paul is using on his Mac is "Parallels" and cost $70-80 here.? Corporately, we use VMWare ESX (a Linux based pay product) and VMWare Server (a free product that runs under Windows server).? We typically have 3-5 virtual machines running on each of 3 host servers, but some of the virtual machines are small ones like the BlackBerry server and the timesheet server.