# Whats the best VM server??

## dlm1065

I want to setup multiple virtual servers.

The issue is I know just enough linux to get in deep ___________ .  My server is trashed.

I started looking around at the VM software but I just don't know what works best on linux.

I have been looking at xen, kvm, virtualbox but do not know enough about the stability and reliability. 

I need to run virtual servers that can interact externally but not trash one another. Currently

I have software I am running on debian AMD64, debian 32 and windows xp.

the spec on the box to run the VM is 

Dual Xeon Quad core box 

3ware sidecar with 2T of storage

4G of fbdimm memory

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## bbgermany

Hi,

i think virtualbox would be not the correct answer in your case. If its a business critical application or if you dont have enough time to migrate your servers, you should consider Citrix XenServer. Otherwise i would suggest to install KVM with libvirtd and virt-manager.

bb

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## andreas_st

If you can live with all guest systems running on the same kernel (linux host and linux guests only) Vserver or OpenVZ are the most efficient solutions. If you need different operating systems I would try Xen. Virtualbox, Qemu and VMware waste a lot of resources and energy by emulating hardware and integrating GUIs where they aren't necessary.

I have been running Linux Vserver and FreeBSD jails for several years in production environments now and didn't run into any serious problems.

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## d2_racing

Did something try Vmware on Linux ? It's good or not  ?

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## mdr13

 *d2_racing wrote:*   

> Did something try Vmware on Linux ? It's good or not  ?

 

I'm using VMware Player on gentoo (amd64). I have WinXP as client system, it's working very well. Fast, reliable, and Windows even has some 3D acceleration (with nvidia drivers on the server). I also tried the Ubuntu LiveCD as client. VMware Player is pretty easy to use, and I recommend it over the server version for a single user/single machine setup because of its speed.

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## Mad Merlin

 *dlm1065 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Dual Xeon Quad core box 
> 
> 3ware sidecar with 2T of storage
> ...

 

Whatever you do, you should get more RAM for that machine, it'll be the limiting factor by a long shot.

Having said that, I'm partial to KVM, Xen/OpenVZ/Vserver aren't an option if you need to virtualize 'doze. Virtualbox seems to be mainly geared towards desktop virtualization, but I haven't actually tried it.

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## dlm1065

There is so much old or misinformed data on the net I decided to ask here to get more current view from people with 1st hand knowledge. I thank both of you for taking the time to respond.

 *andreas_st wrote:*   

> If you can live with all guest systems running on the same kernel (linux host and linux guests only) Vserver or OpenVZ are the most efficient solutions. If you need different operating systems I would try Xen. Virtualbox, Qemu and VMware waste a lot of resources and energy by emulating hardware and integrating GUIs where they aren't necessary.
> 
> I have been running Linux Vserver and FreeBSD jails for several years in production environments now and didn't run into any serial problems.

 

Definitely need to be running running different kernels at least 1 at 32 bit and 1 at 64 bit , plus one running windows.

 *Mad Merlin wrote:*   

>  *dlm1065 wrote:*   
> 
> Dual Xeon Quad core box 
> 
> 3ware sidecar with 2T of storage
> ...

 

Agreed just waiting for the memory cost to drop a bit the memory was extremely pricey when I setup the system, at time of oroginal purchase storage was more an issue than processing now 

the performance vs storage balance has changed.

All the info I found surfing was of unknown age origin for the most part, and what was reliable was older material some much older. Xen sites lead me to believe Xen was supposed to be able to run 

windows but I take it that from your statement that it does not do it or at least not well?? I toyed a bit with KVM/QEMU. Everything  i found pertaining to KVM seemed to indicate it didn't run fast or 

stable so I was starting to lean toward xen.

Let me see if I am getting an accurate picture for pure server solution where I need no GUI just need to run mainly linux software xen is better , but if I need to run windows (xp/server), emulate desktops with GUI tools etc most likely I will want to run KVM?

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## ianw1974

 *Mad Merlin wrote:*   

> Xen/OpenVZ/Vserver aren't an option if you need to virtualize 'doze.

 

You can actually virtualise Windows on Xen - there are even para-virtualisation drivers that exist to even speed things up much more!  It does require though that your processor supports HVM otherwise it won't allow you to create the machine with virt-install or whatever way you create it.

Never use simple image files or simple partitions as they call it with Xen - they are too damn slow due to poor I/O performance.  Always use LVM and create the partitions you need for much higher performance.

Windows XP and Xen Virtualisation

Windows para-virtualisation drivers for xen

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## Mad Merlin

 *ianw1974 wrote:*   

>  *Mad Merlin wrote:*   Xen/OpenVZ/Vserver aren't an option if you need to virtualize 'doze. 
> 
> You can actually virtualise Windows on Xen - there are even para-virtualisation drivers that exist to even speed things up much more!  It does require though that your processor supports HVM otherwise it won't allow you to create the machine with virt-install or whatever way you create it.
> 
> Never use simple image files or simple partitions as they call it with Xen - they are too damn slow due to poor I/O performance.  Always use LVM and create the partitions you need for much higher performance.
> ...

 

Hmm, I stand corrected. I had tried Xen before (about 3 years ago), but at the time Xen could only run highly modified guests. The other main thing I didn't like about Xen was that it was extremely invasive on the host system (you need to run a special Xen kernel, you need recompile glibc a certain way, etc), which at the time (among other things) removed the option of using power management or the proprietary nvidia/ati drivers. For a dedicated server, that's probably no big deal, but for desktop virtualization (on a laptop or workstation), they become rather unfortunate restrictions. I binned the Xen idea and KVM came around very soon after.

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## neonknight

 *d2_racing wrote:*   

> Did something try Vmware on Linux ? It's good or not  ?

 

I've been using VMWare Server (the free as free beer edition) for quite a long time in private and professional environments. I used to use server 1.0.x which seems to be deprecated now and is quite hard to install on newer kernel versions. server 2.0.x runs very fine as well. The big advantage of vmware is the simple fact you can run nearly any operating system (I never had success with OS/2 and BeOS though) on any hardware, so you don't need hardware virtualization support.

The main problem of vmware server is the disk-performance. If you run performance-critical stuff such as databases or high-load webservers, consider accessing harddisks over network protocols such as iSCSI or AOE. You can use disk-partitions as virtual disks (but you can't use RAID- or LVM-devices), which is a performance boost but you lose hardware independence. 

On cheap boards with VIA-Chipsets (which of course no sensible person would use as a server...) you may get unexpected things such as kernel panic on the host when the guest starts the acpi-daemon or guests which interpret the clock as a very relativ thing and run for or behind real time for several hours per day. 

For high availability environments it is useless though, because it can't do live migration of virtual machines. You need VMWare ESX or ESXi for this feature. The drawback of these products is, that they need very special hardware as they only support a very limitied number of chipsets and network cards.

I also started to move things to XEN on Debian Lenny. The performance seems a bit better, but of course it's much more complicated to configure XEN. I also think it's a bit less stable, maybe this is due to the more or less inofficial XEN-ports to kernel 2.6.26 (SuSEs work initially). VMWare ist just graphical clicking and thus quite intuitive. There is also a surprisingly big community with fixes (or at least ideas on how to fix) nearly every problem.

So, my advice: If you run business critical stuff, you should stick to vmware and possibly buy a support package. It is the most stable product I have seen so far, but it has its rough edges. The already mentioned Citrix XEN server might be the same category as there is a big company behind this product.Last edited by neonknight on Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## d2_racing

@neonknight, thanks for the info  :Razz: 

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## sgao

If you are really looking for enterprise level performance, use Xen. Xen provides near native performance to virtual machines that's Xen compatible. Xen also provides very good performance to VMs (such Windows, etc) that require HVM support. Intel and AMD CPUs all support HVM except very low entry lines.  Xen does both paravirtualization and hardware supprted virutalization.

To get fair comparison,  one needs to compare Xen with VMWare ESX/ESXi. VMWare server or workstation is no way close to what Xen can offer.  Basically Xen is an enterprise class virtualization technology available totally free or via commercial offerings (XenServer) from Citrix. 

I've seen Xen VMs running stably and reliably over hundreds of days. On Xen compatible VMs, end users can't tell it's physical or virtual machine.

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## d2_racing

I can have VmWare ESXI at work, so I'm gonna try that and while I'm gonna try Xen too  :Razz: 

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## Deem3n

In past I used Vmware Server on gentoo server + Vmware console on desktop to connect to it.

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## Azangod

I'm using vmware server 2 but I'm really sick of it.

With vmware (workstation adn/or server) you cannot have the last kernel... vmware-modules won't compile... never! what tha f@#!!@#

As I've said I'm sick about vmware... got to move on xen (even if I know nothing about it). I'll do it... if I'll find the time to study & dedicate

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