Tips and Tricks

Not cheap but take a look at VMWare.
You can run 8 virtual machines on a server with 2 proccessors and 2gb ram.
The servers behave just like a stand alone box. The software is great very stable.
Ras.
www.computouchinc.com

Or an alternative to VMWare is Virtual PC.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/

Hi,

U can go for Virtual PC or VM Vware. VM ware can be used and can ping an computer. More over u ca use it for Linux, unix, netware etc. But u need CD for all of this.

Shriram.v

I use VMWare Workstation for training. You can eval it by downloading it from their site. If you end up buying it, it is only about $150ish. The nice thing about it is that you can set the drives to be non-persistant, meaning that once you shutdown the virtual machine, all changes are lost. You can also create snapshots to aid in bringing the vm back to a known-good state. If you are unsure, I can only suggest that you at least try it. Before I did,I thought it was a load of garbage. Others that I've talked to about it also have a stand-offish attitude... but I think that only comes from a lack of understanding of the power of virtualization.