HP DC 7800 - Remote Virtualization Server

Another very interesting project that I have worked on was setting up my old project computer (a 2008 HP-Compaq DC 7800 CMT with a 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.0 GHz, 8 GB of DDR2 RAM, an Nvidia GT-710 with 2GB of DDR3, and a 2TB 5,400 RPM Mechanical Hard Disk, running Windows 10 Enterprise, to function as a remote access virtualization machine. I have chosen Virtualbox as my virtual machine platform and I currently have Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Pro, and I'm working on Windows Vista Ultimate. This setup not only allows me to access these virtual machines through any computer connected to my network, it also allows me to access all of these virtual machines from the comfort and convenience of my smartphones with full desktop access and usability! (And it's pretty cool to be able to run Windows 3.1 on my Android smartphone, especially since that's where my journey began!)

I have this set up in addition to the Virtualbox I have on my principal computer. This has given me the opportunity to set up both remote access and virtualization simultaneously, in addition to giving me full access to learn the core operations from anywhere on the network at a given time. Fun fact: this HP was a refurbished business machine from 2008 that was used in a school library that I purchased from Canada Computers when the screen on my Asus Transformer Book broke (I had a tight budget, since I was still in high school at the time of purchase, but I still wanted something that could play my game collection at the time). I call this desktop a server, since it can be accessed across my LAN from any device anytime it's powered on, with the proper authentication keys, however, I have not ported this forward to be accessible beyond my LAN.

I have further plans for this desktop, so stay tuned. One concept I had in mind was to set up a secondary partition for Windows 7. Running 7 directly on my hardware will open the doors to native legacy application support. That partition will be taken offline, however, and will not be granted access to the network, since it is no longer officially supported and vulnerable to potential security attacks to be trusted on a network. This will also provide me with a working Windows 7 environment to further practice with, since most businesses still run Windows 7, and surprisingly, this operating system still has more than an estimated 20% market share.