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I want to "give" VMs to other people to TAKE HOME and use in their home machines. Those VMs should be configured not to accept USB devices, no CD/DVD and no local drives. Any way keep the VMs secure so that the end-user can't modify the VM config and use USB/CD ?? I'm willing to use any VM product (Hyper-V, VMWare, VirtualBox), but the end-users should be able to run the VMs for free.

I know how to create a Virtual Machine that doesn't have USB/CD/Local Drive access when the VM is in my Windows Network (Active Directory policy), but outside I would have to depend exclusively on the VM configuration.

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VMware has a product that will allow you to control access in this way, it is called VMware ACE. I used it when it was fairly new, and it seemed to work reasonably well, but ultimately it wasn't what I needed so I haven't kept up with the changes.

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  • Great! If that really was the answer, please consider selecting it as correct by clicking the checkmark to the left. Thanks! Nov 23, 2010 at 6:36
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There's nothing like DRM for virtual machines. If a user has a file, they can modify the file. If you need a locked-down environment that people can access remotely, consider a terminal server or a VDI solution like VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop.

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Ultimately once you've given somebody a copy of the VM there isn't really any way to stop them doing what they want to it - physical access trumps everything short of strong encryption.

For free use VMWare Player is an option, which allows people to run, but not edit, virtual machine images. However if they load that image into VMWare Workstation they can do what they want.

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  • I'm not a VMware PLayer expert, but when I last checked the most recent version I was startled to see that I could not only edit VMs but also create new ones. Player is no longer just playing.
    – Chris_K
    Nov 5, 2010 at 20:35
  • @Chris_K - interesting, good to know
    – Cry Havok
    Nov 5, 2010 at 20:36

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