Virtualization Software

[ninjatux]

Which virtualization software do you prefer and why?

I was using Parallels on Mac OS X, but I just switched over to Virtualbox. Parallels is horribly slow compared to both Virtualbox and VMWare, or at least it seems so. The first version they released under Sun's leadership is 1.6.2, and it seems to have quite a bit more features and support for operating systems.

[cajunman4life]

VMWare Fusion.

Haven't tried Virtualbox yet. That's my next step ;)

[TerryP]

qemu, since it's easy to figure out by the documentation and fairly portable.


On a side note, I hate using virtualization software period.

[deadeyes]

In the beginning I also hated virtualisation...

but now I pretty much love it:)

I use Xen on CentOS and have FreeBSD as a guest OS.

On my Mac I use VMware fusion (which is actually a great product) and for my job I run VMware ESX.

Why is xen not in the list? And KVM?
Or is it only virtualisation that works on *BSD?

Greetings all!

[wnsi]

I really am enjoying my using VirtualBox. While it is the lesser known product it has two things going for it in my workplace. 1) The ability to run Solaris as a host. 2) The open source version will compile and run with a FreeBSD host. I notice you did not list Virtual PC.

Question: Am I missing something about Xen or did virtualbox end up incorporating xen once Sun owned them all?

[lvlamb]

Hey ! Can't vote!
Which one do you use : all.
Which one do you prefer : none.
There are blondes, brunettes, redhairs, which one do I prefer?
Just get the bl**dy f***ing job done.

Am an equal opportunity user.
As such, my vote cannot be casted. :p

[BSDfan666]

Emulation/Virtualization is lame, but if I had to do it.. QEMU, none of those other options are available for BSD.

[lvlamb]

Base OS wasn't specified either. ;)

[phoenix]

You really need to specify which type of virtualisation software you want to discuss. I was all set to vote and post some long comments ... but then realised you were only discussing host-based VM software (VMWare Server/Player/Workstation, QEmu, VirtualPC, etc). That's so blase. :(

Now, if you want to talk about hypervisors (Xen, Linux-KVM, VMWare ESX) and other lower-level VM software (and hardware), I'll be all over that. :D

[phoenix]

Question: Am I missing something about Xen or did virtualbox end up incorporating xen once Sun owned them all?

VirtualBox is based on QEmu, and has no relation of any kind to Xen. It's not even in the same class of VM software as Xen (hypervisor vs. host-based).

[Oliver_H]

Virtualbox on Linux or Mac OS X boxes, Qemu on FreeBSD.


>VirtualBox is based on QEmu, and has no relation of any kind to Xen.

To some degree only, but they were responsible for some code in VirtualPC too.

[scottro]

I have my own uneducated, highly subjective guide at http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vmcomp.html

Criticism discouraged--errm, welcome, errm, whatever.

[ninjatux]

VirtualBox only uses Qemu code for certain things. Otherwise, much of the code is still different from whatever else is available.

Here's what I'm really wondering about, at least ever since I read that VMWare's model is to run as many instructions natively as possible. What's the role of CPU VT instructions, then? I thought that CPU VT instructions made this possible, but VMWare has been doing this before the instructions were ever available.

By the way, KVM was listed. I said "Qemu (various combos or not)". Xen is in a class all on its own, which is why it's not appropriate here. I don't think Virtual PC is available for Unix...

[phoenix]

Here's what I'm really wondering about, at least ever since I read that VMWare's model is to run as many instructions natively as possible. What's the role of CPU VT instructions, then? I thought that CPU VT instructions made this possible, but VMWare has been doing this before the instructions were ever available.

VMWare Player/Server/Workstation do everything in software. The CPU virtualisation features aren't used. They do binary translation and patching of instructions in memory.

Latest versions of VMWare ESX/GSX, I believe, can make use of the virtualisation features in CPUs. But I have very little info on that subject.

By the way, KVM was listed. I said "Qemu (various combos or not)".

That's like having a poll with MS-DOS (various combos) and wondering why nobody using Windows ME participated in the poll. :)

Xen is in a class all on its own, which is why it's not appropriate here.

Except that VMWare ESX, KVM, and MS Hyper-V are all in the same class as Xen (hypervisor-based virtualisation).

[s0xxx]

VMWare Player/Server/Workstation do everything in software. The CPU virtualisation features aren't used. They do binary translation and patching of instructions in memory.
I think Workstation uses the CPU features, at the botom of page see Software using AMD-V and/or Intel-VT for list of software that make use of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

Support for Intel VT (no more experimental)
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/05/release-vmware-workstation-60.html

[ninjatux]

Ok, that's my mistake then. VMWare Workstation and Player only.

[ai-danno]

The polling question that was asked was which one do you prefer... I prefer VMware, but we use parallels for cost-efficiency. And parallels isn't bad... it's just not my first choice.

At home, it's actually virtual-PC2007 on windows boxes... free and easy on a typically not-so-free-and-easy platform. Funny how that works.

[phoenix]

I think Workstation uses the CPU features, at the botom of page see Software using AMD-V and/or Intel-VT for list of software that make use of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

http://www.virtualization.info/2007/05/release-vmware-workstation-60.html

There's nothing in the online library, the VMWare website, or the documentation that I could find on their site, that makes any mention of hardware virtualisation support in VMWare Workstation 6.0, VMWare Player 2.0, or VMWare Server 1.0.

According to their VMI Performance PDF (http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1038), they continue to use binary translation, as their current implementation is faster than their experimental hardware virtualisation implementation. This is for VMWare Server ESX 2.0.

There is mention of a hardware assisted version of the VMM in this paper (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/asplos235_adams.pdf) from 2006 that mentions experimental support for hardware virtualisation in VMWare Server 1.0.1. However, there is no mention anywhere (that I can find) on their website that says this is actually available and usable.

So, if they support hardware virtualisation, they go to great lengths to hide that information from the public.

[s0xxx]

Well, I couldn't find much information either, at least on official page presenting VMware Workstation. So I Googled a bit and found the reference link mentioning it. After Googling more I found these:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/03/hypervisor_that.html

Now what Parallels probably means is that their virtual machine monitor takes advantage of hardware assist (Intel VT and AMD-V) on newer processors. VMware Workstation also takes advantage of Intel VT for 64-bit guests, but for 32-bit guests and AMD CPUs, we have a tuned binary translation (BT) monitor. In fact we've shown that for normal workloads, our BT monitor is as fast or faster than VT, and therefore we're more interested in the next generation of these technologies.

http://pubs.vmware.com/ws6_ace2/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

Improved 64-Bit Guest Support

In addition to other 64-bit guest operating systems supported on Intel and AMD systems, 64-bit guest operating systems that run on Intel EM64T VT-capable processors are fully supported.

In PC Hardware part they say CPU compatible for 64-bit guests could be:
Intel Pentium 4 and Core 2 processors with EM64T and Intel Virtualization Technology

Also: http://communities.vmware.com/message/766047#766047

So you're right, they're not so vocal in saying that "the product" suports it, don't know why either. :confused:

[vermaden]

I would also add Xen/xVM and KVM to the list.

[prijikn]

I think VMware is the one of the best virtualization software because It's free and It's compatible with all Linux

[vermaden]

I think VMware is the one of the best virtualization software because It's free and It's compatible with all Linux

Free ... same free as nvidia binary blob, not a good thing really, maybe you will understand that some day.

Compatible with all Linux you say, all Linux systems use Linux kernel (SRSLY?) so what is strange here that it runs on all Linux systems?

WMware is crap because it is LIMITED to Linux (and windows, even worse).

You cannot run it on OpenSolaris or FreeBSD (dont even start about WMware3) or any other UNIX.

[ephemera]

i haven't tried VirtualBox yet. how does it compare performace/feature-wise with VmwareWS6?

[vermaden]

@ephemera

Its genrally as fast or even faster then WMware, very responsive, great for desktop usage, along with its seamless mode.

[s0xxx]

i haven't tried VirtualBox yet. how does it compare performace/feature-wise with VmwareWS6?
Here's Ivan Voras's results after running FreeBSD in VirtualBox (http://blogs.freebsdish.org/ivoras/2008/07/31/virtualbox-2/) (on Windows XP), and what he thinks about VMWare Server 2.0 (http://blogs.freebsdish.org/ivoras/2008/07/30/could-vmware-server-20-be-any-worse/).

[ephemera]

interesting, i didn't expect virtualbox to be in the same league as vmware in terms of performance.

[vermaden]

interesting, i didn't expect virtualbox to be in the same league as vmware in terms of performance.

I will have to benchamrk them (and many more) as part of my master's thesis, so I will put them here before 2009 begin.

[scottro]

There's a fellow on Fedora forums, who did some casual benchmarking of VBox vs. kvm.
He found that KVM was actually a bit ahead of native in raw computer and VBox a bit behind. (By raw computing, I've forgotten what he used to test, but some sort of number crunching, I think.) Using Native as 100, KVM (on a machine with a VT enabled processor) was something like .99 and VBox about 100.01 or so.

Phoenix and myself have expressed our opinions of 2.0 and they pretty much agreed with the link provided S0xxx. Judging from their forums, it seems that most people seem to agree that 2.0 is a regression.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

At work I am setting up a workstation for myself that will need virtualization. It will run Slackware 12.1 and will need to emulate Windows XP. The primary software that will be run will be MS Office and maybe some kind of vnc.

Any suggestions?

[scottro]

For a situation like that, I think VirtualBox will be your best choice. See my http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vmcomp.html

(Did I mention that page already in this thread? Well, it was probably on page one.)
The only argument against it would be if you need the XP machine to be a host on the LAN. However, setting up a bridged connection isn't overly difficult.
VMware-server (choose the current 1.6-whatever, not the beta 2.0) does the bridged networking out of the box but requires more resources in my opinion.
Lastly, one thing I do find is that any VM will gradually eat up resources, and I've found that if I start with nice -n 19 (lowest priority) it will still respond well enough, and not slow down the host very much.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

For a situation like that, I think VirtualBox will be your best choice. See my http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vmcomp.html

(Did I mention that page already in this thread? Well, it was probably on page one.)
The only argument against it would be if you need the XP machine to be a host on the LAN. However, setting up a bridged connection isn't overly difficult.
VMware-server (choose the current 1.6-whatever, not the beta 2.0) does the bridged networking out of the box but requires more resources in my opinion.
Lastly, one thing I do find is that any VM will gradually eat up resources, and I've found that if I start with nice -n 19 (lowest priority) it will still respond well enough, and not slow down the host very much.

Thanks. It may need to connect to the LAN - probably via Zenworks in the Windows. That would be needed to email the Office docs - unless I have access to those files from inside Linux (I've never set something like that up before, though - samba?).

I have a friend at work who uses VMWare running under Windows XP to emulate Windows XP that he uses to configure automated Windows installs. He sets the RAM that VMWare has access to so that it doesn't take all of it. I would imagine that VirtualBox would have similar configurability.

[scottro]

Yes, it's not RAM that's the issue, it's more CPU time. The docs that come with VBox aren't bad, they go through the limitations of NAT. It can get to the LAN, but the LAN can't get to it, at least not without more research than it took me to set up bridged networking. That is, it will have a default NAT address of 10.2.x.x (I think, maybe 10.1.x.x or even 10.0.x.x.) From that machine, on a 192.168.1.0/24 network, I can put in, for example, WinSCP, a GUI scp client for MS systems, and ssh by address to the host. I can reach the Internet. I can access other Windows hosts by IP---hrrm, possibly by name, but I've never tried. At work, I have it set up for bridged networking, and I no longer have any MS boxes on my home LAN. However, it can connect to say, a box running samba, again, I'm not sure if it requires the IP or can do it by name. So, it can get out without problem. However, the other machines on the LAN can't get in.

Again, setting up bridged networking isn't all that difficult, it's just not an out of the box thing at this point. Now that I've written an article about it (linked from the article mentioned above) it's almost trivial, since, like so many things in Unix and Unix like systems, it's not that it's complex, it's just that the documentation that will work is either hard to find or outdated.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Could you please clear up my confusion. What is the host OS and the guest OS.

The way I'm thinking is that the host OS is the one that is running the virtualization software and the guest OS is the one that is being emulated by the virtualization software. Is my thinking correct?

[DrJ]

That's right.

(Do I need extra characters to post?)

[Carpetsmoker]

There was a minimum of 10 characters, I see no reason to keep this enabled ... So I disabled this feature.

[DrJ]

Yay!

[phoenix]

At work I am setting up a workstation for myself that will need virtualization. It will run Slackware 12.1 and will need to emulate Windows XP. The primary software that will be run will be MS Office and maybe some kind of vnc.

If the CPU supports hardware virtualisation (Intel VT-D, AMD SVM), I'd recommend KVM. It basically turns the host Linux kernel into a hypervisor, and provides full-virtualisation (which means you can run pretty much any OS as a guest). If you use Linux kernel 2.6.25 or 2.6.26 in the host, and KVM 71 or 72, then you can also use paravirtual network drivers in Windows to get near-native network speeds. There's work on a paravirtual block driver for Windows, that will eventually allow it to get near-native harddrive speeds as well.

Plus, you get a simple, standard VNC console to all of your virtual machines. No need to install rdesktop or VNC in the guest, and no need to use a standalone access tool like VMWare/VBox.

(Yeah, I'm a KVM pimp right now.)

[phoenix]

Could you please clear up my confusion. What is the host OS and the guest OS.

The host OS is installed on the physical hardware.

The guest OS is installed into the virtual machine.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

If the CPU supports hardware virtualisation (Intel VT-D, AMD SVM), I'd recommend KVM. It basically turns the host Linux kernel into a hypervisor, and provides full-virtualisation (which means you can run pretty much any OS as a guest). If you use Linux kernel 2.6.25 or 2.6.26 in the host, and KVM 71 or 72, then you can also use paravirtual network drivers in Windows to get near-native network speeds. There's work on a paravirtual block driver for Windows, that will eventually allow it to get near-native harddrive speeds as well.

Plus, you get a simple, standard VNC console to all of your virtual machines. No need to install rdesktop or VNC in the guest, and no need to use a standalone access tool like VMWare/VBox.

(Yeah, I'm a KVM pimp right now.)

Thanks for the info. The system that they gave me is an older Pentium 4 single core ~2.4 GHz, so I don't think it's up to the task.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

I decided to use VirtualBox. It was a bear to try to install - and after all my trying, I still couldn't get it to compile. So, I opted for the pre-compiled binary with the non-open license.

I got that installed and I have an empty VM configured (I gave it - 256MB RAM, 10GB storage) that I'll install XP on tomorrow.

[DrJ]

I'd give the VM between 512 and 750MB of memory if you want to do much in it. Of course your main box needs about that amount for itself.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

I'd give the VM between 512 and 750MB of memory if you want to do much in it. Of course your main box needs about that amount for itself.

The whole system has only 1 GB RAM. I guess I could give the VM 512 MB, but all I'll primarily be doing with it is Office - and maybe ssh. It's been awhile since I really did any in-depth work with Windows, but I thought that 256 MB would be enough for XP and Office - is that the case (note that the installer, which was told this was going to be a Windows XP VM, only recommended 192 MB)?

[DrJ]

In most VMs you can up the allocated memory pretty easily. If it starts swapping, then bump it up. 256M for XP is pretty marginal; I'd be very careful about the services and applications you load at boot time.

Or you could just add a GB of memory. In the US that would probably cost $30 or so.

[JMJ_coder]

I'm running VBOX on a Slackware Host and Windows XP as a guest. I am having difficulty trying to do something.

I have another system (also Windows XP) that I need to remote into and setup a share. I have no problem getting into the remote system via Remote Desktop. I try to setup a shared drive, but it is a no go. The remote system cannot see the Windows XP guest enough to map a network drive. The guest OS has a private (10.x.x.x) IP address and a different hostname than what it really is on the network.

I need to do this so that I can install Visual Studio on the remote systems. I have the DVD and need the remote system to install from the DVD mounted on my local system.

I need help in solving this. I can see three different solutions, but cannot figure out completely how to solve them completely:

1) figure out a way for the remote system to be able to map a network drive on the VBOX guest OS.
2) setup a Windows share in Linux (without installing additional software like Samba).
3) connect to the Linux system from the remote system via ssh (that is rdesktop from the Linux system to the remote Windows system and remote back from the Windows system to the Linux system).


Number three seems like it would be the easiest - I already have the ssh server/client setup - but I don't know how to allow installation via ssh from the local system to the remote system.


Any advice?

[ephemera]

if you setup bridging for vbox then the remote m/c should be able "see" the share in the guest OS.

[lvlamb]

Always many ways.
The guest usually has his own IP address, as the host has his.
Set an FTP, NFS, Samba server on the host, the guest can use the client side.
With coLinux on Windows, you even can, from the guest, access the Windows files natively.
With UWIN on Windows, you are in a full *nix world when seen from a remote machine: ssh, (s)ftp,.... (if coLinux isn't enough, and you can even acces both with different privileges).
Or use the directory services, but you don't seem to like Windows.

[JMJ_coder]

if you setup bridging for vbox then the remote m/c should be able "see" the share in the guest OS.

You would think! I not certain of the bridging setup - networking was functioning right out of the box without me having to configure anything.

The host has a static public IP, but the guest gets a private assigned by VBOX.

[scottro]

As a rule, with VBox in NAT mode, it's a bit difficult to access the guest. I usually bridge it. Have I spammed my page in this thread yet?

http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vboxbridge.html

[ephemera]

> The host has a static public IP

so, the remote m/c is across the Internet.
your isp's probably given you only one ip? in which case you could enable port forwarding (port 445 - w/o netbios) on vbox's NAT.

[JMJ_coder]

> The host has a static public IP

so, the remote m/c is across the Internet.
your isp's probably given you only one ip? in which case you could enable port forwarding (port 445 - w/o netbios) on vbox's NAT.

We have a whole class B network. But, my terminal only has a single IP address.

Either way, I decided it was just quicker just to do the installations manually this time - there were only three machines. But, I will be continuing to investigate this for the next time I need to do a remote install.

[JMJ_coder]

As a rule, with VBox in NAT mode, it's a bit difficult to access the guest. I usually bridge it. Have I spammed my page in this thread yet?

http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vboxbridge.html

Thanks, I'll be looking into this.

[hansivers]

For those of us who are addicted to benchmarks, i found this link quite interesting :

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-168825.html

The author compares :

VMWare Workstation 5.5.3
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
Parallels Workstation 2.2.2112
VirtualBox 1.3.6

[scottro]

I don't know about the MS or Parallels but that VBox version (as well as VMware) are rather dated. VBox improved greatly since 1.3. It's up to 1.6.4.