[HLUG] Virtualbox vs KVM Virtualisation

[Julian Robbins]

Hi

I've been using VirtualBox for some desktop and server virtualisation tasks.

Its ok, it's fast enough easy to use, but I've been caught out a couple of
times with a bug relating to corrupting virtualdisks if you delete some
snapshots, and odd problems where the virtualised server would go back to a
point in December if the host server had to be rebooted. All quite annoying.
Plus Virtualbox doesn't have a full web admin as yet, so you have to go
where the server is physically located to admin it. Perhaps the most
annoying thing is that it runs as an application, where if you close the app
it will stop the virtual servers running within.

For these reasons I'm contemplating using KVM instead. But I dont know much
about it. I've read many good things about it, but would like to hear from
anyone of their experiences of using Virtualbox, KVM or other virtualisation
applications ie Xen. I've used VMware and don't really want to go that path,
I'd prefer to use an open source solution if I can.

Julian