Linux Virtulization Options (or to KVM or not to KVM?).

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

KVM is built into the kernel, so if you get an update, you don't have to
go to a vendor for an update. My experience is with the desktop, and I
had Windows XP, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows 7 running
simultaneous under KVM on Fedora 10. I also have Fedora 10 and Windows
XP running as guest OS's under Virtualbox on my laptop. My experience is
desktop, not server. There are some limitations, but you can do stuff
with a VM you can't do with real iron. (Years ago while converting
Burroughs to IBM we had 4 physical tape drives, and I had confirgured 16
virtual under VM/370. We had one job that under Burroughs only used 4
tapes at any one time, but would dynamically open several during the
run. With IBM (OS/VS1 you had to allocate all the drives during the
beginning of the job in JCL. So, what we did was simply use virtual tape
drives and assign and deassign them as necessary). Basically, you should
be able to accomplish wat you want under KVM. However, there are some
features that are not available from the GUI, but are from the command
line - QEMU.

BTW: Remember to enable the virtual flags on your processor.

On 06/25/2009 12:51 AM, Mick T wrote:
> I'm in the process of replacing a few older servers, and I think this
> would be a good opportunity to take advantage of virtualization to save=

> on hardware and related costs. Both Red Hat and Ubuntu are moving to
> using KVM for their virtualization choice. I'm leaning towards using
> Ubuntu with KVM as a host for both Linux and Windows 2003 server guests=
=2E
> My google-fu hasn't turned much information about the performance of
> guests, nor many hints of large scale implementations.
>
> Has anyone used KVM with both Linux and Windows guests and would like t=
o
> share their experiences or advise?=20
>
> I'm interested in how stable KVM is, and how well guest OS's perform
> under KVM. And if anyone has done any (or come across any) performance
> comparisons between KVM and VMWare and any other virtualization
> technologies?=20
>
> Plus, how easy is it to use? I want to make sure that less-experienced
> folk will be able to manage whatever I build with minimal intervention
> from me.
>
>  =20


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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