[Hampshire] Multi-headed virtualization

Hi,

I'm slowly sneaking Linux into my customer's premises one system at a time.

My next project concerns virtualization with Linux as the host. We currently have a whole rack of desktop PCs in the studio, most of which don't actually do that much. I'd like to consolidate these 8 machines into a single virtual install to free up rack space and stop blowing needless carbon up the chimney. My thought is to deploy something like a maxed out HP DL380.

The keyboards and mice are connected from the desk to the CPUs by USB extenders. I'd like to fit a pair of 4-headed nVidia Quadro NVS 2D graphics cards giving a total of 8 monitors. I want to have a number of Win XP VMs and associate each one with one of the graphics card heads and one of the keyboard+mouse pairs so the user thinks each virtual system is a real PC.

Is this possible and what is the best way to go about it please? I'm particularly not sure how to make sure each kayboard and mouse always ends up attached to the right VM. Would you use one of the free solutions or go for VMWare?

Thanks,
Paul.


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