[Gloucs] Type 1 hypervisor.

[Anthony Edward Cooper]

    Yes Virtual box is a very good product. I have increasingly become 
less impressed with VMware. I just can't see the point in VMware 
Workstation, which you pay for (it's a bit like the old vmware server 
edition with most of the disadvantages of player), VMware player is 
increasingly demanding newer hardware/processor extensions (I can't use 
version 3, I suspect this is to do with the virtual console) and VMware 
server is generally fine (but only one a largish machine and the Web 
front end sucks big time (can be very unreliable)). Their ESX products 
are very good but you have to pay for that.

    Virtual box on the other had has a very light foot print and just 
works. One can disconnect from the console of the machine and run 
headless (with the non-free RDP extensions).

    I evaluated both VMware server 2 an VirtualBox 3.1.x - non free 
(this time last year). The only reason I went with VMware server was 
this was for my machine at work and:
    1) The licence for VMware server would be free for the company and 
VirtualBox would not be (with the extensions). However for home use this 
is completely irrelevant as the business edition is free for home use.
    2) We do use VMware ESX at work and using VMware server 2 means  
that the VMs created on that product would work directly inside ESX 
(which I have done).

    Otherwise I would have gone with VirtualBox as it uses less 
resources and according to postings suffers less from processor creep.

    If you go for VMware and you want to run VMs on your machine even if 
you are logged out of the host and connect into the VMs via 
X11/RDP/VNC/NoMachine then go for VMware server (it's like a poor man's 
ESX server). You could try ESXi? (free for home use) but server will 
probably suffice. If you just want to run up a couple of VMs on the 
desktop and access their desktop consoles directly then player should 
give better graphics performance as it is non-detachable and renders 
more directly.

    But if you go the player route you might as well use VirtualBox (VB 
can run headless/detached you just have to do it from the command line 
rather than a `nice' GUI).

    As for Xen, does this really count as virtualisation software or 
more like Solaris's Zones? You need quite specific hardware extensions 
to run this - albeit readily available in modern processors (may not be 
available in the mobility range).  I have not tried it as I don't have 
the hardware that supports these extensions. Also Xen seems to be going 
out of favour.

    Tony.

Steve Fraser wrote:
> Copied and pasted directly from the VirtualBox website:
>
> "Before version 4.0, there were two editions of VirtualBox: a full binary
> containing all features and an "Open Source Edition" (OSE) with source code.
> With version 4.0, there is only one version any more, which is open source,
> and the closed-source components have been moved to a separate extension
> pack."
>
> "The binaries are released under the terms of the GPL version 2." (This is
> referring to the open source binaries)
>
> And this is what is says about the extension pack: "Support for USB 2.0
> devices, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards. See this chapter from
> the User Manual for an introduction to this Extension Pack. The Extension
> Pack binaries are released under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation
> License (PUEL)."
>
> Hope that clears things up for you.
>
> I would also recommend VirtualBox, it will do exactly what you want. You
> will probably want the features in the expansion pack too.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gloucs-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
> [mailto:gloucs-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of GEOFF BAGLEY
> Sent: 31 May 2011 18:21
> To: Gloucestershire LUG
> Subject: Re: [Gloucs] Type 1 hypervisor.
>
>
>   
>> From: Matthew Phillips
>> Virtualbox-ose stands for
>> OpenSourceEdition!
>>
>> Matthew Phillips
>>     
>
> Hi Matthew.
>
> Please can you tell me what license they use, and is it still Oracle ?
>
> The attraction of xen and qemu is the GPL.
>
> Geoff
>
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