[Tfug] What are the best options for virtualization?

[Zack Williams]

> What kind of experiences have you had with the other
> virtualization options? I haven't looked at the offerings in a
> while, but I remember these were the best options a few years
> ago:
>
> - KVM
> - Linux VServer
> - QEMU
> - UML
> - VMWare
> - VirtualBox
> - Xen

I've used Xen (with Linux and Opensolaris), QEMU (mainly as a utility
platform), MS's Hyper-V, and VMWare (on Linux and Mac).  I haven't
played around with VMWare's ESX solution, but it's probably worth a
look.

My take is that you use what:

 A. Works Well
 B. Meets your performance needs

For example, some of the above solutions work better than others.
>From my experience, Windows hosts do much better on Hyper-V with MS's
paravirtualized drivers than they do on Xen with the GPL PV drivers,
whereas Linux hosts work fine with MS's Hyper-V drivers, as long as
you are very careful during upgrades, and are find running in PV mode
under Xen.    VMware Server or Fusion works well and is generally bug
free, but often isn't the highest performing, especially if you can't
load it's drivers.

QEMU comes with a lot of handy utilities for doing physical to virtual
conversion - it's the only thing I know of that can take a system
image created with dd and boot it or convert it to other
virtualization formats.  I took a customer's ancient SCO box that had
a failing hard disk, recovered it with ddrescue, then converted it to
.vmdk and it's running (with intermittent kp's) under VMware Fusion
right now.

Try stuff out, see how well it works, lather, rinse, repeat...

- Zack