Virtualization

942 Views | 7 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by Average Joe
eric76
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AG
Has anyone here ran any virtual instances of operating systems on their computers?

I'm planning on playing around with it the next couple of weeks.

There are a number of different approaches to the problem. What is the best approach?

What operating system is best to run it all? I'm tempted to try it with either SuSE Linux or Ubuntu.

Other options might be one of the BSDs such as OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or NetBSD. Or maybe another Linux such as Red Hat Linux.

When the Linux has both a desktop and a server choice, such as Red Hat Linux or Ubuntu, would the server option be a better choice than the desktop option?
Average Joe
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AG
Are you wanting to virtualized an OS on another OS? Or do you want a full virtualization setup?

I run ESXI on a few hosts at my house with a total of about 13 or 14 Vm's. I've run Proximox before as well.

I would recommend Prox if you don't work with Vmware professionally. It's completely free where ESXI has limited features for free.

I've used VMware workstation to virtualize an OS on my Windows machine. It works well, but haven't used it a ton.
kb2001
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AG
Can you provide more info? What are you trying to accomplish?

Are you just looking for a type 2 hypervisor just to run a few VMs on your regular desktop/laptop? Or are you looking for a type 1 hypervisor to install to bare metal and run several in that way?

For the former, Virtualbox is easy and works well. There's an open source version and an Oracle version,both are free and both work well. For the host OS, CentOS or Ubuntu work fine. The desktop vs server version aren't really that different, it's just a base set of packages that are installed. You can add whatever packages you need on top of that. At home. I use the "desktop" versions of things, and Virtualbox on top of that.

For the latter, there are a lot of good choices these days. We tested out Proximox, it seemed pretty decent but lacking for our needs. Openstack is a bit more robust interface and works well, it can support several different hypervisors. KVM or Xen are good hypervisors. These are all platforms you can install to bare metal and build VMs on top of that, rather than having a usable bare metal OS as well.
eric76
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AG
Average Joe said:

Are you wanting to virtualized an OS on another OS? Or do you want a full virtualization setup?

I run ESXI on a few hosts at my house with a total of about 13 or 14 Vm's. I've run Proximox before as well.

I would recommend Prox if you don't work with Vmware professionally. It's completely free where ESXI has limited features for free.

I've used VMware workstation to virtualize an OS on my Windows machine. It works well, but haven't used it a ton.
What do you mean by "full virtualization setup"?

I have one computer that has to run Windows for a specific package that is used once each morning for about a minute. It collects data from our copier and transmits it to the vendor. So it would need to have a virtual copy of windows for that one package.

Also, at least one OpenBSD instance. And at least one Ubuntu instance because I have a specific package that I need to run that requires Ubuntu.

In addition to those, if they will work, copies of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Plan 9 from Bell Labs would be great.

And on my workstation, OpenBSD and a couple copies of SuSE LInux.

I have one software package that requires an older version of SuSE LInux, but I don't use it enough to keep a separate computer with the older version of SuSE Linux. For this one, a dual boot could work instead. Actually, it would work with other versions of LInux from the same period. It's just that I've been using SuSE Linux nearly as long as I have OpenBSD (about 20 years) so that's the one that comes immediately to my mind.
eric76
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AG
kb2001 said:

Can you provide more info? What are you trying to accomplish?

Are you just looking for a type 2 hypervisor just to run a few VMs on your regular desktop/laptop? Or are you looking for a type 1 hypervisor to install to bare metal and run several in that way?

For the former, Virtualbox is easy and works well. There's an open source version and an Oracle version,both are free and both work well. For the host OS, CentOS or Ubuntu work fine. The desktop vs server version aren't really that different, it's just a base set of packages that are installed. You can add whatever packages you need on top of that. At home. I use the "desktop" versions of things, and Virtualbox on top of that.

For the latter, there are a lot of good choices these days. We tested out Proximox, it seemed pretty decent but lacking for our needs. Openstack is a bit more robust interface and works well, it can support several different hypervisors. KVM or Xen are good hypervisors. These are all platforms you can install to bare metal and build VMs on top of that, rather than having a usable bare metal OS as well.

I hadn't thought of a hypervisor to install without an OS. I didn't realize that was possible.
UmustBKidding
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Also remember different hypervisor's support different devices to their guests. My hyperv instance won't expose USB to clients. There are some workarounds for USB sticks but if your coppier instance need to talk USB you need to insure it's supported. VMware offers the most vertsitale stack but vcenter, vmotion and all the bells make it expensive, but worth in datacenter deployment IMHO. For your Susa use case I usually use a docker container to host instead of a VM.
Not a super fan of VM on my every day machines. But have vbox in case. Also have a nuc I carry in my laptop bag with a windows, hyperv, and specific Linux instances just in case.
Average Joe
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AG
eric76 said:

Average Joe said:

Are you wanting to virtualized an OS on another OS? Or do you want a full virtualization setup?

I run ESXI on a few hosts at my house with a total of about 13 or 14 Vm's. I've run Proximox before as well.

I would recommend Prox if you don't work with Vmware professionally. It's completely free where ESXI has limited features for free.

I've used VMware workstation to virtualize an OS on my Windows machine. It works well, but haven't used it a ton.
What do you mean by "full virtualization setup"?

I have one computer that has to run Windows for a specific package that is used once each morning for about a minute. It collects data from our copier and transmits it to the vendor. So it would need to have a virtual copy of windows for that one package.

Also, at least one OpenBSD instance. And at least one Ubuntu instance because I have a specific package that I need to run that requires Ubuntu.

In addition to those, if they will work, copies of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Plan 9 from Bell Labs would be great.

And on my workstation, OpenBSD and a couple copies of SuSE LInux.

I have one software package that requires an older version of SuSE LInux, but I don't use it enough to keep a separate computer with the older version of SuSE Linux. For this one, a dual boot could work instead. Actually, it would work with other versions of LInux from the same period. It's just that I've been using SuSE Linux nearly as long as I have OpenBSD (about 20 years) so that's the one that comes immediately to my mind.
By that I meant installing the hypervisor on bare metal instead of hosting it on another OS. It's typically the way I recommend people do it instead of running it on their normal Windows machine.

Looking at what you want to do, I would recommend running a hypervisor on bare metal and loading a VM for Windows then a Docker host to run all of the different Linux distros you want. With your Linux background Docker shouldn't be difficult and it it would make things very lightweight. Don't even bother with Docker on Windows, either. It would not take much hardware to run all of that.

As for which hypervisor to use, HyperV and ESXI are free, but limited. Proximox is free with a lot of features that the paid version of HyperV and VCenter have but it's opensource.
eric76
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AG
On my main workstation, Windows is my least used operating system. It came with Windows and I keep the hard drive it came with for when I need to apply upgrades to the bios which doesn't happen very often.

I'm rather short on computers at the moment. We got hit by lightening a month ago and that took out several servers and other equipment.

For my workstation, a dual boot could work, but I'm going to use it to experiment with virtualization before using it on the servers.
Average Joe
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AG
eric76 said:

On my main workstation, Windows is my least used operating system. It came with Windows and I keep the hard drive it came with for when I need to apply upgrades to the bios which doesn't happen very often.

I'm rather short on computers at the moment. We got hit by lightening a month ago and that took out several servers and other equipment.

For my workstation, a dual boot could work, but I'm going to use it to experiment with virtualization before using it on the servers.


For what you want to run, it won't take much. You could get something like an HP z420 with a Xeon and 16-32GB of ram for less than $200. That would do everything you wanted no problem.

The great thing about most hypervisors and Dockers is how easy it is to migrate from one system to another. Start on what you have now and migrate it when you have extra hardware.
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