| Posted by jscholes, 12-23-2009, 09:17 AM | | Hi all,
Let me start off by saying I am not interested in offering VPS hosting to anybody, I just want a few VM's to run on a Linux dedicated server. So, I am looking for suggestions for free VM software for Linux, that I can access via the shell or via a web interface. I would like to run Debian, and possibly Windows XP in VM's. I also don't want it to take over my server in terms of me having to install a custom kernel. I would be running the software on a Debian 5.0 32-bit machine, 8GB RAM, Intel C2Q processor. Any and all suggestions welcome! Thanks in advance.
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| Posted by gregm11, 12-23-2009, 09:23 AM | | Take a look at virtualbox. I've used it many times and it works great especially on your desktop for testing purposes. I listed a couple others below as well.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
http://www.vmware.com/products/esx/
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| Posted by VMhosts, 12-23-2009, 10:50 AM | | I would go for vmware server http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ or even better ask the provider if they can image the dedicated server with vmware esx
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| Posted by barry[CoffeeSprout], 12-23-2009, 11:50 AM | | If you have CentOS installed you can just user Xen.
Ubuntu and Fedora come with KVM based virtualization.
Debian, I'm not too sure
Last edited by barry[CoffeeSprout]; 12-23-2009 at 12:03 PM.
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| Posted by MikeTrike, 12-23-2009, 12:01 PM | | Citrix XenServer?
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| Posted by barry[CoffeeSprout], 12-23-2009, 12:02 PM | | That could also work, just like VMWare.
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| Posted by MikeTrike, 12-23-2009, 12:04 PM | | Yes, but VMWare was already listed a half dozen times. Just throwing alternatives into the mix.
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| Posted by jscholes, 12-23-2009, 01:08 PM | | Thanks all for the suggestions. I like the idea of VirtualBox, as I could easily create VM's on my home Windows machine, and then upload and run them on the server. VMware ESX and KVM aren't really options I would consider, due to them needing kernel modification and/or server OS reinstall with ESX support. XenServer looks a bit advanced for what I need, but I have bookmarked it for reading later on. VMware Server looks interesting; if it has a command line interface, then that would probably be the option I went for for the same reasons as VirtualBox (I could create VM's in VMware Workstation on my Windows machine, and then upload them to the server). Has anyone tested, with either VirtualBox or VMware, running VM's created on a Windows host on a Linux machine?
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| Posted by MikeTrike, 12-23-2009, 01:11 PM | | I installed VirtualBox on an Ubuntu machine and ran XP Pro without issues.
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| Posted by ramnet, 12-23-2009, 02:12 PM | | For Debian I would strongly suggest KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine).
Runs very well on Debian and is easy to get working properly - there's an article on howtoforge.com about it somewhere.
I would strongly urge you to stay far away from VirtualBox - on linux, it is near impossible to get proper networking to work - so unless you like all your VPS behind a NAT I'd urge you to stay the hell away from it.
KVM is also minimally invasive on the kernel (it requires a new kernel but is very compatible - i ran a couple KVM instances on a Debian 4 desktop machine with compiz on not too long ago - KVM should play nice)
Xen and vmware ESX are radical changes to how the operating system works (hell, ESX is an operating system) - this obviously isn't what you want.
In any event, all virtual machine technologies require kernel modifications as they will want to take advantage of the hardware's virtualization extensions (VT-x) - the only thing I can think of that runs purely in userland is QEMU - and it is very easy to get going but will be slow as hell due to not having any kernel modifications (although you can install kqemu and get a big speed increase - but again, that's a kernel mod).
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| Posted by jscholes, 12-23-2009, 03:41 PM | | Thanks. I'll look into KVM then. I don't mind making modifications to the kernel unless they are going to disrupt services running on the host machine. I'll mainly be using VM's for testing purposes, so that my development work doesn't affect other server users.
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| Posted by StevenG, 12-23-2009, 10:42 PM | | I also second using KVM. I would use Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) though, rather than Debian. You might also want to install virt-manager as well for X GUI if you want to use it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM
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