recommendations on virtualization software

[Tom Buskey]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Jeffrey O'brien
<JObrien at expertserver.com>wrote:

>
>
> >>>
> From:   Mark Ellison <mark at ellisonsoftware.com>
> To:     Greater NH Linux User Group <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Date:   3/19/2009 11:58 AM
> Subject:        recommendations on virtualization software
>
> 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.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Mark Ellison                        Ellison Software Consulting, Inc.
> tel: +1 (603) 362-9270              38 Salem Road
> web: http://EllisonSoftware.com     Atkinson, NH  03811, USA
>
> >>>
>
> Mark,
>
> Your best bet for OS support would be in VMware(Try Server, its Free and
> less bloated than workstation), due to the binary translation they are able
> to run the most variety of OSes (BSD's, Solaris x86, Windows, Linux 2.4
> -2.6).  For 64bit support you will have to enable VT for your intel platform
> in the BIOS (under processor options as the default is disabled, AMD is
> enabled by default).  KVM is up and coming and is a good choice for running
> Linux and Windows, but you wont see other UNIX variant support there.
>
> Cheers,
> Jeff
>

I've run VirtualBox headless on top of Fedora.  It kept up with kernel
updates well.
I ran VMware Server 1.x before that.  I had to have the client  open
remotely for each VM.  VMware broke whenever I installed a new kernel.  I
had to hold back on that until VMware release an update to work with the
kernel.

I've run VMware Server 2.x on Windows XP.  It's much less resource intensive
then Server 1.x.

You can only run one of these at a time.  You might have to uninstall before
switching.  This goes for KVM and maybe Xen too.

I'm running OpenSolaris on a non VT CPU.  Zones work well.  I've done
branded Linux zones (kernel 2.4 with CentOS 3) on it.  You won't get much
hardware support.  The Zones can't conntect an NFS server running in the
global (base) system but they can connect to other NFS servers.  Zones &
VirtualBox will work together.

VirtualBox on OpenSolaris isn't as polished as on Linux/Windows/MacOSX.

I'm currently running VMware ESXi on a box.  It will throttle RAM & CPU
usage to the VMs as needed.  I'm running an OpenBSD SSH gateway, a Linux
backup server (direct access to a SCSI tape drive), a Linux media server and
a Windows VM to run the VMware console to to the ESXi system.  FWIW, it's a
DL360 G3 with 3 GB RAM on 2.8 GHz Hyperthreaded CPU.

All of the above are free options.

If you need hardware support (USB), ESXi won't do it.  I was happy to get
the SCSI tape working though.  VirtualBox and VMware Server will do USB
support.  You will have a bit of overhead from the OS.  You'll have plenty
of power with your setup.  ESXi might not run well with SATA.
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