I've been evaluating various VM products for desktop use, and I've decided that VMWare Workstation provides enough advantage over the free products to be worth the price.
My current desktop is Linux Ubuntu 11.10, running on the bare metal. It's my intent to move, progressively, onto a Linux Mint 12.0 installation, running in a VM. That is, for a few weeks or months, as I move applications and configurations, one at a time, I'll have both running.
Currently, I'm running on an evaluation license of Workstation 8.0, with the host installed on the Ubuntu, and the Mint in a guest.
Once I have moved everything into the Mint VM, I plan on replacing the host - doing a clean, bare-bones, Linux install on a new disk, and then installing the Workstation host on that. Using it for little more than hosting VMs - including the Mint VM I'll be using as my primary desktop.
My problem is that I'm not likely to finish the switchover process before my evaluation license runs out.
So the question - am I going to have problems with the Workstation license, if I install it on a hard drive with an Ubuntu install, and then later install it on a different hard drive with a different Linux install. I'm not worried about the legalities - there's only one physical computer, and it's only going to boot off of one drive at a time. But I am worried that I might bump against problems with Workstation's own license validation. I could easily see how it might decide that I'm trying to run it on two different machines.
Can I expect problems? Or am I worrying about nothing?