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View Poll Results: Which VT software do you prefer?
Parallels 0 0%
Virtualbox 13 37.14%
VMWare (various flavors) 16 45.71%
Qemu (various combos or not) 6 17.14%
Voters: 35. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 30th June 2008
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Default Virtualization Software

Which virtualization software do you prefer and why?

I was using Parallels on Mac OS X, but I just switched over to Virtualbox. Parallels is horribly slow compared to both Virtualbox and VMWare, or at least it seems so. The first version they released under Sun's leadership is 1.6.2, and it seems to have quite a bit more features and support for operating systems.
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Old 30th June 2008
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VMWare Fusion.

Haven't tried Virtualbox yet. That's my next step
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Old 30th June 2008
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qemu, since it's easy to figure out by the documentation and fairly portable.


On a side note, I hate using virtualization software period.
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Old 30th June 2008
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In the beginning I also hated virtualisation...

but now I pretty much love it

I use Xen on CentOS and have FreeBSD as a guest OS.

On my Mac I use VMware fusion (which is actually a great product) and for my job I run VMware ESX.

Why is xen not in the list? And KVM?
Or is it only virtualisation that works on *BSD?

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Old 30th June 2008
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I really am enjoying my using VirtualBox. While it is the lesser known product it has two things going for it in my workplace. 1) The ability to run Solaris as a host. 2) The open source version will compile and run with a FreeBSD host. I notice you did not list Virtual PC.

Question: Am I missing something about Xen or did virtualbox end up incorporating xen once Sun owned them all?
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Old 30th June 2008
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Hey ! Can't vote!
Which one do you use : all.
Which one do you prefer : none.
There are blondes, brunettes, redhairs, which one do I prefer?
Just get the bl**dy f***ing job done.

Am an equal opportunity user.
As such, my vote cannot be casted.
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Old 30th June 2008
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Emulation/Virtualization is lame, but if I had to do it.. QEMU, none of those other options are available for BSD.
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Old 30th June 2008
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Base OS wasn't specified either.
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Old 30th June 2008
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You really need to specify which type of virtualisation software you want to discuss. I was all set to vote and post some long comments ... but then realised you were only discussing host-based VM software (VMWare Server/Player/Workstation, QEmu, VirtualPC, etc). That's so blase.

Now, if you want to talk about hypervisors (Xen, Linux-KVM, VMWare ESX) and other lower-level VM software (and hardware), I'll be all over that.
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Old 30th June 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wnsi View Post
Question: Am I missing something about Xen or did virtualbox end up incorporating xen once Sun owned them all?
VirtualBox is based on QEmu, and has no relation of any kind to Xen. It's not even in the same class of VM software as Xen (hypervisor vs. host-based).
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Old 30th June 2008
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Virtualbox on Linux or Mac OS X boxes, Qemu on FreeBSD.


>VirtualBox is based on QEmu, and has no relation of any kind to Xen.

To some degree only, but they were responsible for some code in VirtualPC too.
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Old 30th June 2008
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I have my own uneducated, highly subjective guide at http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vmcomp.html

Criticism discouraged--errm, welcome, errm, whatever.
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Old 1st July 2008
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VirtualBox only uses Qemu code for certain things. Otherwise, much of the code is still different from whatever else is available.

Here's what I'm really wondering about, at least ever since I read that VMWare's model is to run as many instructions natively as possible. What's the role of CPU VT instructions, then? I thought that CPU VT instructions made this possible, but VMWare has been doing this before the instructions were ever available.

By the way, KVM was listed. I said "Qemu (various combos or not)". Xen is in a class all on its own, which is why it's not appropriate here. I don't think Virtual PC is available for Unix...
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Old 2nd July 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjatux View Post
Here's what I'm really wondering about, at least ever since I read that VMWare's model is to run as many instructions natively as possible. What's the role of CPU VT instructions, then? I thought that CPU VT instructions made this possible, but VMWare has been doing this before the instructions were ever available.
VMWare Player/Server/Workstation do everything in software. The CPU virtualisation features aren't used. They do binary translation and patching of instructions in memory.

Latest versions of VMWare ESX/GSX, I believe, can make use of the virtualisation features in CPUs. But I have very little info on that subject.

Quote:
By the way, KVM was listed. I said "Qemu (various combos or not)".
That's like having a poll with MS-DOS (various combos) and wondering why nobody using Windows ME participated in the poll.

Quote:
Xen is in a class all on its own, which is why it's not appropriate here.
Except that VMWare ESX, KVM, and MS Hyper-V are all in the same class as Xen (hypervisor-based virtualisation).
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Old 2nd July 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by phoenix View Post
VMWare Player/Server/Workstation do everything in software. The CPU virtualisation features aren't used. They do binary translation and patching of instructions in memory.
I think Workstation uses the CPU features, at the botom of page see Software using AMD-V and/or Intel-VT for list of software that make use of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

Quote:
Support for Intel VT (no more experimental)
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/...tation-60.html
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Old 2nd July 2008
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Ok, that's my mistake then. VMWare Workstation and Player only.
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Old 3rd July 2008
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The polling question that was asked was which one do you prefer... I prefer VMware, but we use parallels for cost-efficiency. And parallels isn't bad... it's just not my first choice.

At home, it's actually virtual-PC2007 on windows boxes... free and easy on a typically not-so-free-and-easy platform. Funny how that works.
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Old 4th July 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by s0xxx View Post
I think Workstation uses the CPU features, at the botom of page see Software using AMD-V and/or Intel-VT for list of software that make use of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

http://www.virtualization.info/2007/...tation-60.html
There's nothing in the online library, the VMWare website, or the documentation that I could find on their site, that makes any mention of hardware virtualisation support in VMWare Workstation 6.0, VMWare Player 2.0, or VMWare Server 1.0.

According to their VMI Performance PDF, they continue to use binary translation, as their current implementation is faster than their experimental hardware virtualisation implementation. This is for VMWare Server ESX 2.0.

There is mention of a hardware assisted version of the VMM in this paper from 2006 that mentions experimental support for hardware virtualisation in VMWare Server 1.0.1. However, there is no mention anywhere (that I can find) on their website that says this is actually available and usable.

So, if they support hardware virtualisation, they go to great lengths to hide that information from the public.
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Old 4th July 2008
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Well, I couldn't find much information either, at least on official page presenting VMware Workstation. So I Googled a bit and found the reference link mentioning it. After Googling more I found these:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/03...isor_that.html

Quote:
Now what Parallels probably means is that their virtual machine monitor takes advantage of hardware assist (Intel VT and AMD-V) on newer processors. VMware Workstation also takes advantage of Intel VT for 64-bit guests, but for 32-bit guests and AMD CPUs, we have a tuned binary translation (BT) monitor. In fact we've shown that for normal workloads, our BT monitor is as fast or faster than VT, and therefore we're more interested in the next generation of these technologies.
http://pubs.vmware.com/ws6_ace2/wwhe...tml/wwhelp.htm

Quote:
Improved 64-Bit Guest Support

In addition to other 64-bit guest operating systems supported on Intel and AMD systems, 64-bit guest operating systems that run on Intel EM64T VT-capable processors are fully supported.
In PC Hardware part they say CPU compatible for 64-bit guests could be:
Quote:
Intel Pentium 4 and Core 2 processors with EM64T and Intel Virtualization Technology
Also: http://communities.vmware.com/message/766047#766047

So you're right, they're not so vocal in saying that "the product" suports it, don't know why either.
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Old 5th July 2008
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I would also add Xen/xVM and KVM to the list.
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