Stopping Virtual Machines accidentally starting from Virtual Server admin interface

As much as I think the admin interface into Virtual Server 2005 is great, it does have a couple of really annoying feature for me. One is that it is what it is - a web interface, not a thick client. Hence, certain fields aren't as rich in capability as a thick client application, for example when entering absolute path names for disks and VMs if you haven't previously set up search paths. The other feature which bugs me is that on the standard web admin interface to Virtual Server, you get to see a thumbnail for running guests or an icon when guests aren't running. So what's annoying about that? First, here's a typical view.

The annoying feature for me (and several other people judging by the emails I've had sent to me) is that clicking on the icon automatically starts the server running. This isn't always what you want, especially in a circumstance which happened to me - read on. There is unfortunately no way to disable this functionality that I know of. But, if you can live with it, there is a workaround which I use. Change the VS admin website properties using the link on the left hand side as per the screenshot below.

De-select the "Remote View" column. The web admin interface master status will now be like below

Unfortunately, you lose the thumbnail for gauging the state of running VMs, but at least you won't turn on your VMs accidentally - this happened to me during a demonstration a couple of weeks ago and made the demonstration on other VMs run very slowly while a VM was accidentally booting up.

One other thing about this change is that it also speeds up the time it takes for the admin interface to be displayed. I think that's in the admin guide somewhere - I'll have a dig around to find it.

Hope you find this useful.