1 PC, 2 consoles (as in 2 monitors, keyboards and mice)

Solution 1:

You may be able to use Thinsoft's BeTwin to (help) pull off what you seem to be aiming to do.

Overview

BeTwin VS is the software that allows multiple users to simultaneously and independently share a personal computer running Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business or Ultimate Edition - 32-bit) or Windows 7 (32-bit). Installation is simple. Install a second VGA card/adapter and connect it to the second monitor. Plug in a USB mouse, USB keyboard and, optionally, USB Audio. Finally, install the BeTwin VS software.

They have a 2000/XP version as well as the 32 and 64-bit Vista/7 version.

Solution 2:

I dont know what OS you use. Linux could have different useres instead of virtual machines, with each configured to use a different screen, mouse or keyboard. I guess. Unix, which is the grandpa of Linux was mainly used that way, back in the days.

Solution 3:

Finally, I managed to get my desired setup working. Partially, but the concept works.

The answer is indeed a hypervisor (like vmware ESXi which I use) and the actual answer I needed is VMDirectPath or generically: PCI passthrough (VT-d, on the intel platform (which I use))

The problem for this setup is that in order to passthough the video card to a VM, besides having a passthrough capable maainboard AND processor, you also need a special set of these (at least for vmware). There is a dedicated thread for this subject over on vmware: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=0&tstart=0 Be sure to read that BEFORE buying any hardware for such a setup.

My personal setup right now is to use an USB VGA "card". So I have all K,V,M on USB now. The only annoying problem I still have is that when the VM boots up, the default video adapter is the virtual one, so I have to login the vsphere client (form another PC) and switch around the adapters. I'm currently looking at some automated way of doing this and I think I'll find something eventually (worse case scenario, I record a macro :) ). After removing the default vmware adapter, all is ok now.