[QCLUG] Virtual Machines

[Arron Lorenz]

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I've been using VirtualBox as a virtual server for my personal machine. I do
like the program over all. For an open source program it has very very close
performance to vmware server. Though cooper is correct vmware is still
faster. I would like to point out that vmware has released vmware
server 2.0beta
http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/

It's run using Apache's tomcat appliance server. I do like it's completely
headless operation in windows and under linux (I'm using it on ubuntu). You
navigate/configure the vm from a web interface 127.0.0.1:8333\ui . The speed
over the web interface from across the internet is pretty responsive though
I would still use RDP for the connection to the vm.

On the downside the vm uses up it's allocated ram, but also the application
for me running in Firefox tends to be pretty ram intensive.


Well that's my 2 cents.
Arron




On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Chris Cooper <QCAdmin@gmail.com> wrote:

> So as to not hijack a perfectly good thread on partition sizes, I
> decided to post anew some thoughts on the Virtualbox comments brought
> up.
>
> I have recently had a chance to do more research on virtual machines
> for work, and inside Ubuntu, From my experience VMWare server performs
> slightly better than virtualbox after you install vmware-tools on the
> guest-OS.  While not open source, it is free from www.vmware.com.  The
> VMWare-tools are deffinately a MUST on the guest.  Without the proper
> VMware mouse and video driver installed, performance is sluggish at
> best.
>
> If you have a processor that supports the virtualization flag, it can
> make a huge performance gain for a 64-bit guest OS.  However, it seems
> to slow down XP VM's under 7.10.  More info on the flag can be found
> here:
> http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/linux-tip-how-to-tell-if-your-processor-supports-vt/
>
> It is important to note that as of this time, VMWare doesn't have much
> if any support for virtualizing your 3D card, so trying to game inside
> a VM isn't real practical.  For that, I would stick with wine and
> cedega.  This also means you may notice a big slow down in a Vista VM
> if you have the Aero interface on.  It seems to run decently well with
> it disabled, though.
>
> Another fun use for VM's is trying out Live CD's.  I am constantly
> downloading different Live cd's for various things, so I created a
> small VM with no hard drive, that I use for trying out a live cd
> before I burn it.  CD-R's are cheap, but it still takes a fair amount
> of time to burn and reboot just to see what is inside.
>
> As for Xen, it doesn't really compete on the same level as Virtualbox
> and VMware server.  Xen is probably one of the fastest of all the
> virtual machine apps, but it is a hypervisor (a lightweight linux
> distro who's sole function is to host VM's), and can't be run inside
> your main environment.  It is restricted to 64-bit processors only,
> and doesn't provide access to the guest VM's from it's console, since
> it is command line only.  However, for hosting multiple VM's on one
> server, it is great.  VMware offers their ESX hypervisor, which has a
> better tool set, but isn't as efficient at Xen as sharing resources
> over multiple VM's.
>
> TechThrob had a really nice write up comparing VMware Server,
> Virtualbox, Qemu and Parallels. It lacks some heavy tech specs, but is
> good reading for people just getting into the whole virtual machine
> thing.
> http://www.techthrob.com/tech/linux_virtualization.php
>
> --Cooper
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-- 
From:
Arron James Lorenz
Reel to Reel Drive In
Reach Global Networks LLC
563-579-7046

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