Please advise on starting point
 

I am sure that the answers I seek are to be found all over this forum. But by the time I found this wonderful source of information I was already brain dead from hours of Google research. I hope you will all forgive my newbie questions and help point me in a useful direction. Right now I feel like I am floundering in many incorrect directions.

My situation is this: I provide support for a system containing 5 computers. This system is fielded in 9 different locations. So I have drive images of 5 times 9 computers (45 drives).

To help me in my support tasks, I would like to virtualize on my workstation 5 computers as analogs of the actual 5 machines that comprise our system. I would then like to be able to mount (not even sure if that is the correct terminology in this context) the correct drive images for each of the 5 virtual machines to replicate an actual fielded system's configuration (complete with networking between the 5 virtualized computers).

All my drive images were taken with Acronis, so it would be a nice bonus if some product could mount these images directly.

So given this rather modest virtualization requirement, I would like some recommendations on the best virtualization product to handle this setup and preferably one that is simple to use for a beginner. Also, if my expectations are out of whack, please advise me on where I am going wrong and perhaps point me in a more productive direction.

Thank you very much in advance for any help that can be provided.

Hi rshields9093,

Welcome to Virtualization.net. It sounds like you need to be able to run 5 computer lab on your workstation/one pc. What you need is Vmware workstation which will allow you to create virtual machines on your laptop or desktop and be able to work with 5 additional "computers" (VMs) on the same workstation.

Does that make sense?

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