[Tfug] What are the best options for virtualization?

[Ryan Cresawn]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Glen Pfeiffer <glen at thepfeiffers.net>wrote:

> 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


Glen,

I have experience with KVM, VirtualBox, and Xen.

VirtualBox met my needs well for many years until I was forced to use
Microsoft Outlook for work e-mail. I found Outlook would crash once or more
daily when run on VirtualBox. My conclusion was that there are some bugs
that exist in the networking code when using a bridged adapter. I switched
to KVM at work and have never had a crash of Outlook. So for my work
computer, which has hardware virtualization support, KVM is excellent. At
home my laptop lacks hardware virtualization support and so I use
VirtualBox.

If USB device support is desired in your guest you will really want to
consider VirtualBox over the others. VirtualBox makes attaching and
detaching USB devices from your guest simple, whereas KVM and Xen do not.

My experience with Xen was short-lived. I did use it briefly but my work
computer has an Nvidia graphics card and at the time it was not possible to
use Xen and then proprietary Nvidia driver.

One final thought on KVM is that Ubuntu has broken the KVM modules once with
one of their kernel updates from a little over a month ago. On a more recent
set of updates I was required to reinstall KVM to get my guest to boot.
Debian may do more testing and have fewer problems of this type.

Ryan
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