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 2.0 beta <a href="http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/">http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/</a><br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br><br><br>Well that's my 2 cents.<br>Arron<br><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Chris Cooper <<a href="mailto:QCAdmin@gmail.com">QCAdmin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
So as to not hijack a perfectly good thread on partition sizes, I<br>
decided to post anew some thoughts on the Virtualbox comments brought<br>
up.<br>
<br>
I have recently had a chance to do more research on virtual machines<br>
for work, and inside Ubuntu, From my experience VMWare server performs<br>
slightly better than virtualbox after you install vmware-tools on the<br>
guest-OS. While not open source, it is free from <a href="http://www.vmware.com" target="_blank">www.vmware.com</a>. The<br>
VMWare-tools are deffinately a MUST on the guest. Without the proper<br>
VMware mouse and video driver installed, performance is sluggish at<br>
best.<br>
<br>
If you have a processor that supports the virtualization flag, it can<br>
make a huge performance gain for a 64-bit guest OS. However, it seems<br>
to slow down XP VM's under 7.10. More info on the flag can be found<br>
here: <a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/linux-tip-how-to-tell-if-your-processor-supports-vt/" target="_blank">http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/linux-tip-how-to-tell-if-your-processor-supports-vt/</a><br>
<br>
It is important to note that as of this time, VMWare doesn't have much<br>
if any support for virtualizing your 3D card, so trying to game inside<br>
a VM isn't real practical. For that, I would stick with wine and<br>
cedega. This also means you may notice a big slow down in a Vista VM<br>
if you have the Aero interface on. It seems to run decently well with<br>
it disabled, though.<br>
<br>
Another fun use for VM's is trying out Live CD's. I am constantly<br>
downloading different Live cd's for various things, so I created a<br>
small VM with no hard drive, that I use for trying out a live cd<br>
before I burn it. CD-R's are cheap, but it still takes a fair amount<br>
of time to burn and reboot just to see what is inside.<br>
<br>
As for Xen, it doesn't really compete on the same level as Virtualbox<br>
and VMware server. Xen is probably one of the fastest of all the<br>
virtual machine apps, but it is a hypervisor (a lightweight linux<br>
distro who's sole function is to host VM's), and can't be run inside<br>
your main environment. It is restricted to 64-bit processors only,<br>
and doesn't provide access to the guest VM's from it's console, since<br>
it is command line only. However, for hosting multiple VM's on one<br>
server, it is great. VMware offers their ESX hypervisor, which has a<br>
better tool set, but isn't as efficient at Xen as sharing resources<br>
over multiple VM's.<br>
<br>
TechThrob had a really nice write up comparing VMware Server,<br>
Virtualbox, Qemu and Parallels. It lacks some heavy tech specs, but is<br>
good reading for people just getting into the whole virtual machine<br>
thing.<br>
<a href="http://www.techthrob.com/tech/linux_virtualization.php" target="_blank">http://www.techthrob.com/tech/linux_virtualization.php</a><br>
<br>
--Cooper<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
QCLUG mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:QCLUG@qclug.org">QCLUG@qclug.org</a><br>
<a href="http://qclug.org/mailman/listinfo/qclug" target="_blank">http://qclug.org/mailman/listinfo/qclug</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>From:<br>Arron James Lorenz<br>Reel to Reel Drive In<br>Reach Global Networks LLC<br>563-579-7046