Communication between a host machine and a Remote VM running WMWare ESX

Question

I am trying to automate the testing of an installer on a remote virtual machine running VMWare ESX. I wanted to know what kind of technologies would help me in doing so, as this task requires extensive communication between the host machine(wherein the user will be getting reports of all the tests(whether pass or fail)) and the remote VM wherein the automated testing code will be hosted. Basically any insight into communication between between the host and the remote VM (mainly i want some sort of a UI to display to the user on the host machine from the VM which runs the test code). ANy help would be of great use. Thank you.

Answer 1

If you are willing to code it yourself, then you could create a wcf service on the host. A client on the host and on the vm. And then feed the client on the VM the data you need. (E.g. Installation started, finished, error,...)

Then with the client on the host you could implement a duplex binding (usually you should avoid this for security reasons, but since you are running in a "sandbox-like" environment it shouldn't really be an issue.) and the service could push any updates from the vm to the host.

That would be one possible way to do it.