recommendations on virtualization software

[Thomas Charron]

On 3/19/09, Mark Ellison <mark at ellisonsoftware.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am seeking recommendations and pros/cons of different virtualization
> software.
> The physical machine is a Intel T9400 quad core with 8GB ram, 2x500GB
> sata disks and 1Gb nic.  My current plan is to run 64 bit Fedora Core 10
> (or 11 as available) as the host OS.  The guest OSes will include a mix
> vista, xp and other UNIX variants.
> I am aware of the commercially available VMware workstation, VirtualBox
> and Xen.  Any feedback and recommendations are appreciated.

  I cannot speak for Xen, however, I have typically used VMWare.  I
actually wanted to migrate to VirtualBox, as it has several features
that VMWare simply doesn't have, or did and they deprecated out of
existence.  However, I found VirtualBox to be much less stable, and
additionally lacked certain key features, such as running as a Daemon
out of the box (I mean seriously, that one was huge for me,
specifically, running it under Windows).

  The features I DID like with VirtualBox was the ability to share
discreet USB devices directly to the guest OS, as well as the file
sharing capability.  However, neither of these features is nearly as
important as stability.  Perhaps it was my configuration, but I really
wasn't doing anything funky, so in the end, I simply deleted it and
moved on.

  I didn't even look at Xen, as I really wanted cross platform
capabilities without requiring the Intel VT extensions.  For some
bizaar reason, my laptop BIOS doesn't let me turn it on, even though
the processor supports it.  Xen requires the use of the VT extensions
if the OS itself isn't modified to support Xen.

-- 
-- Thomas