[aklug] Re: Dedicated Virtualization

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Greg Madden <gomadtroll@gci.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday 08 December 2010 10:12:31 am adam bultman wrote:
> > On 12/08/2010 10:03 AM, Christopher Howard wrote:
> > > Hey guys, at work I managed to get hold of one (pretty nice) spare PC,
> > > and I want it to be dedicated to just running VMs. The VMs will be
> mainly
> > > be used for testing purposes (e.g., experimenting with
> > > software/networking configurations).
> > >
> > > I was wondering if I should go with what I know (Qemu built on a Linux
> > > base) or if I should try out this "Xen" thing. Whatsay?
> >
> > Xen is good, but the last time I used it (~1 year ago) 'fixing' VMs that
> > were broken was terribly difficult. The downside of Xen that I see:
> > When you allocate RAM to a VM, it is 'taken' from the host OS, and
> > reserved. (VMWare doesn't do that; at least, ESX doesn't.) (Yes, I
> > know that oversubscribing is bad.) I haven't followed too closely with
> > what RHEL is using to replace Xen, but it'd be a good idea to look into
> > it's replacement.
> >
> > VMWare is another good one to try, since it'll more likely apply to any
> > future positions you might hold ( depending on what you are planning on
> > getting into, job-wise). I don't know of any large companies that use
> > Qemu for virtualization (in production), but I know quite a few that use
> > VMware. Getting your feet wet with VMWare would be good in any event.
>
> No ones mentioned VirtualBox, it is owned by Oracle but it has an open
> source
> (OSE) edition, it is bundled with Debian. I use it after switching from
> VMware
> workstation. Not sure of any downsides resource wise, it is easy to use and
> I
> don't miss VMware.
>
> --
> Peace,
>
> Greg
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> I'd +1 this suggestion, but that's just my personal taste. My impression is
that Xen is rather on the
broken side and IMO VirtualBox is easier to use and seems to have better,
faster IO than Qemu/KVM.
Networking is also easier (read:GUIfied) tho not as easy as VMWare's network
manager.

You can probably get the OSE version easily enough and it's perfect for what
you want to do.

As far as Qemu goes -my impression is that the non x86 architectures aren't
very developed (eg you can't install anything
but linux guests on qemu/sparc or qemu/macppc IIRC) and are sort of falling
by the wayside.

That said, if you're familiar with Qemu, it's still a better choice (IMO)
than Xen (esp if you use KVM instead of Qemu).

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Received on Wed Dec 8 23:03:06 2010