virtualization

Post by **nikos** » 2009 Mar 04, 08:43

i haven't got a clue about virtualization, ie running other windows versions on the same computer in a sandbox (i am not talking about multi-boot). There are some free stuff from microsoft and VMWare. Is there anyone out there with hands-on experience on the subject?

i want to run a virtualization environment on my existing computer (a 3 year old pentium M laptop), running windows XP. Am i dreaming?

what are the minimum hardware and OS requirements do you think? I guess it will need a lot of hard disk space for each different windows installation.

thanks

pj · Post by pj » 2009 Mar 04, 11:56

May want to start by checking out the Virtualization home page at Microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virt ... fault.aspx

and their Virtual PC 2007 pdownload:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

----------------
PJ in (clear, sunny day ahead!) FL

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2009 Mar 05, 00:45

Not having any hands on experience with VM, I went ahead and tried it.
I downloaded and installed MS Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and was able to host win7 on my 6 year old Pentium 2 machine which runs XP. Unfortunately because its just a P2 and my motherboard is maxed out at 1GB of RAM, that means things run e-x-c-e-e-d-i-n-g-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
A couple of weeks ago I set the same physical machine up as dual boot (XP/W7) and everything ran full-speed -- of course that was one OS at a time, not W7 on top of XP. I have over 100GB free HD space, so no issue there.
My sense is that you need at least 1.5 GB RAM (2 GB pref) and a modern cpu for tolerable performance running Vista (or W7) virtually on top of XP. BTW, I read somewhere in the MS notes that there is no advantage of having a multi-cpu machine because MS Virtual PC can only use one.

So nikos, what cpu do you have on that lappy, and how much RAM and how much HD space?

Post by **nikos** » 2009 Mar 05, 07:05

it's a 2 GHz cpu with 1GB ram. Not dual core so not x64 capable. I think it's time to get a new laptop!

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2009 Mar 06, 14:48

Just get one with lots of RAM so it won't become obsolete in 3 or 4 years, and a good keyboard so it won't frustrate you with missed keystrokes.

And you might have a cheap alternative of adding RAM to what you have, if it's not already max-ed out. :shock:
(You don't need x64 to manage less than 4GB of address space.)

johngalt · Post by **johngalt** » 2009 Apr 11, 06:04

Sorry to get in on this late - but another option you should consider exploring is VirtualBox, from Sun - It rocks.

I use it currently to boot all the previous versions of Windows 7 that I have (all 64bit) as well as Vista 64bit, XP 64bit, and OpenSolaris 2008.11. I am slowly working on getting up to installing and configuring Gentoo again, and then I think I am going to play with WHS and Server 2008 (the latter courtesy of the DreamSpark program).

Here is the URL for VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.org/

And here is a link to the latest Beta (from BetaNews): http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Vi ... 72769426/1

The main advantage of VBox is that starting with 2.2 it has the ability to support *64bit* OSs even if your host OS is only 32bit - just as long as your hardware supports 64bit OSs, you're golden.

Post by **nikos** » 2009 Apr 11, 06:12

thanks for the tip
out of vmware/microsoft/sun, which is the most lightweight (yet fully featured?)

johngalt · Post by **johngalt** » 2009 Apr 11, 23:21

Honestly, I think you get more with VMWare, whereas VBox and VPC are probably close to being even.

However, size-wise, VBox is ~60 MB, VPC is between 30-60 MB also (as seen from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en and VMWare is 499 MB for the current version *trial* (but it is for both 32bit and 64bit OSs).

I also ran across this over at LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/5204434/the-begin ... virtualbox

I've also used Parallels Desktop versions 3 and 4 (primarily a Mac product, but they do make a Windows product as well), and, TBH, I have found VBox to be the easiest one.

If you plan on going with Win7, though, as on OS, as it supports being able to boot off of .VHD (Virtual HDs) that are created by VPC, that might be the best route for you to go with.

I had major issues with VPC supporting the Virtualization Extensions for my computer build, whereas VBox had no issues whatsoever. I also beta tested VMWare 6.5 and it, too, had issues with Virtualization extensions (meaning the default hardware available to the virtual machines was ~Pentium III in VPC and P4 or equivalent (IIRC) in VMWare). Not very powerful considering I am running a Core2Quad 6600 OC'd to 3.2 GHz....

Post by **nikos** » 2009 Apr 12, 05:02

that's very useful, thanks!

Cosmo · Post by **Cosmo** » 2009 May 02, 16:37

Another late reply:

I use VirtualBox since some time, and here are some experiences about that.

The first try with that was on an old machine with a 1 GHz Athlon and only 256 MB RAM. I created a virtual machine with XP on a XP host. It is a little bit tricky, but even this works. Regarding of what you want to run inside the virtual machine 256 MB RAM for a virtual XP machine will do it in most cases, 512 MB RAM is surely enough, so the host must have 1 MB RAM built in.

A known problem with VB is the fact, that typically all x.y.0 releases are full of bugs, partly not usable and should be avoided. I use 2.1.4 with good results. 2.2.0 was a desaster, 2.2.2 (the last number arises for 2 with every public build) is rather new and I wate for more responses in their forum.

In case a new hardware is considered for hosting virtual machines, you should take care, that the CPU / Board / BIOS do not only support Hardware virtualisation (as VT = Vanderpool Technology in Intel), but also nested paging, this improves the speed. Only the newest Intel / AMD CPU's support that.

If the virtual machine is a modern Windows OS, IO/APIC should get activated in the virtual machine. This must be done before installing Windows in the guest, otherwise it has no effect.

At the moment there is a problem with the download-server for VB, so that downloads fail. In the VB-forum this is discussed with pointing out some alternative download places.

Post by **nikos** » 2009 May 02, 16:56

as VT = Vanderpool Technology in Intel

cheers, i heard about this but i forgot the name of the technology. I must make sure the new laptop i get has it!

Cosmo · Post by **Cosmo** » 2009 May 02, 17:42

Ah, there is one point which I forgot to point out: You can put and run multiple virtual machines on one host and connect them via a virtual lan (already included in VB). This may be helpful, e.g. to test LAN configurations, for example the LAN-behavior of x2 in a LAN connection. Obviously the mentioned amount of RAM is necessary for each VM running at the same time. That means, if you plan to buy a laptop for virtualization purposes you should have enough RAM on the host. 3 MB on a 32-bit host (more is mostly useless, as 32-bit systems can only address 4 GB, but that includes also other memory as the graphic card memory)[1]; on 64-bit systems you are only theoretically limited, but the question is, how many RAM does the board allow to install.

Another thing: VB allows to run 64-bit guest even on 32-bit hosts, but in this case the hardware must support this. If you want to make sure, that you can use this on the new machine, I suggest to download the separatly downloadable PDF-manual for VB, which tells the conditions for that.

EDIT:
[1] There is anyway a good reason to install 4 GB RAM in a 32-bit system. The reason is, that out of performance reaosns it is advisable, to use RAM in dual-channel mode. That means, 2 pieces of 1 GB RAM modules are faster than 1 piece of 2 GB RAM module and so on. I do not know a 1.5 GB RAM module (that does not mean, they do not exist), so 2 x 2 GB RAM would be the way to get dual-channel mode. But you must be aware, that Windows only recognizes and uses 3.x (x may differ) GB RAM.