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Which OS Makes the Best VMWare Host?

Posted by Cliff on Sat May 20, 2006 09:55 PM
from the better-than-a-multi-boot dept.
astrojetsonjr asks: "A few days ago, Trillian_1138 asked about running Linux on a laptop. Yagu started a thread suggesting the use of VMWare to allow running multiple flavors of Linux and Windows at the same time. Lots of readers then posted their success stories using VMWare . My primary machine is an IBM laptop and I'm getting ready to move to using VMWare to allow me run Linux, Solaris and Windows at the same time. First, what is the OS/distro with which you have had the best success hosting VMWare? Finally, what host OS install and setup tips do suggest?"
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[+] Technology: VMware to Make Server Product Free (as in beer) 216 comments
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[+] Advice for Linux on a Laptop? 276 comments
Trillian_1138 is seeking your advice on the following: "So I'm looking at replacing my aging laptop. I have a desktop running Ubuntu, which I use as a primary, and it is more than adequate for my needs. However, I'd love a small, portable laptop to use in class and on trips. I've been looking at the MacBook Pros and, more recently, the MacBooks, and was almost ready to buy the low-end MacBook and be done with it. I liked its ability to dual-book to Windows for a couple of school-related programs, but the more I thought about it the more I like using Ubuntu at home and the less reason I saw to buy a Mac if I could use Ubuntu on a laptop. This brought me to the idea of buying a laptop to use as a dual-boot Linux/Window machine, either with Linux or Windows pre-installed, and setting up a dual-boot with the other OS. Might any of you have advice, anecdotes, success stories, horror stories, or general input?"
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  • Priorities first. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ant P. (974313) on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:04PM (#15373992) Homepage
    Pick whichever supports most of the physical hardware, since whatever it can't see the emulated OS can't either. If you're left with more than one choice there, narrow it down further depending on which matters to you more: speed, stability, security etc. Of course in a perfect world you wouldn't need to choose between those, but then you wouldn't need a virtual machine either.
      • > That's a bitch to get acceleration working in some, if not all, Linux distributions.

        All ATi chips before and including the r250 (ranging from the RADEON 7000 to the RADEON 9250) have open source drivers bundled with Xorg and the Linux kernel. All other ATi chips can be used with the binary drivers from ATi. The thinkpads I know have RADEON MOBILITY 7500 chips, so they are perfectly supported.

        > On the other hand, I run Debian on my T30, no acceleration on the video at all. It used to be working jus
  • Which OS Makes the Best VMWare Host?

    Why do you want to run VMWare? I have used both VMWare and qemu (as well as Xen, but I don't think that will work if you are interested in running Windows), and have found qemu to be the superior of the two. Sure, there is no built in GUI, but there are external 3rd party GUIs available if you want. Seriously, qemu makes networking much easier thatn VMWare does. No need to mess with modules (unless you want the accelerator, which I recommend), no need for services or daemons running like with VMWare. Additionally, it is open source, which I consider a huge plus. You can also emulate other CPUs. Want to emulate a PowerPC so that you can test compiling your app on FreeBSD on a PowerPC processor? How about Sparc? The *only* way in which I would see VMWare as being superior is if you are using one of their server consolidation products (GSX or ESX, I think). For workstation-level stuff, qemu is the way to go.

    • Don't forget coLinux (Score:5, Informative)

      by spiritraveller (641174) on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:18PM (#15374030)
      If Windows is the host, coLinux [colinux.org] is a worthy solution. It runs almost as fast as a native install. And you can download a preconfigured Debian or Gentoo root image from the website.

      Basically, it is a Linux kernel patched to run under Windows.
      • Is colinux still alive? It is far from a complete project, and has had only a single 0.0.X update in the last year.

        The project is cool, but doesn't work very well and seems quite stale.
        • by spiritraveller (641174) on Saturday May 20 2006, @11:15PM (#15374172)
          The project is cool, but doesn't work very well and seems quite stale.

          Worked great last time I used it, although the configuration involved editing text files.

          The last release came out in February. That's recent enough to indicate that it's still being developed.
    • by inflex (123318) on Sunday May 21 2006, @05:47AM (#15375155)
      >>Why do you want to run VMWare? I have used both VMWare and qemu (as well as Xen, but I don't think that will work if you are interested in running Windows)

      What is it with people and their desire to try and disseminate your reason for having or wanting to, God forbid, purchased a software package. Mostly I hear it from people who -

      - don't use VM's for business work
      - don't like commercial software
      - don't understand that time == money
      - have more time on their hands than pending tasks

      It's one thing to not want to purchase software, fair enough - but let's not try and stone people.

      Fact is, vmware out of the "box" runs and runs very well. It's a dead simple system to use even with an unsupported distro like Slackware linux. It's $199 USD (for workstation) and the cost of the purchase is long forgotten after the ease of use has saved you many times more. There's a lot more "messing around" with other solutions. You can burn up $199 in wages in half a day.

      The difference between a functional package and a usable -and- functional package often isn't a lot but it's a small difference that a lot of people are more than happy to pay for.

  • Windows is probably the best host for workstation, mostly because the current state of video drivers makes windows better for any app that needs graphical output. I haven't run GSX/server, but given my experience with ESX I would assume that linux is superior for those kinds of workloads.
  • Under Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yhetti (57297) <yhetti&shevix,net> on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:15PM (#15374022) Homepage
    I've been using VMWare Workstation and GSX (now just "Server") very successfully under Linux. I have two virtualized Linux and three virtualized 2003 Server instances on a 2x Opteron 240. It works wonderfully.

    However, to be honest, on a laptop it likely makes more sense to run the host as WinXP. With Linux hosting and XP in Vmware, you don't get hardware graphics acceleration (perhaps in either OS.) Linux and laptops are still not there yet, so you may as well use XP as the host OS and get full hardware support.
  • VMWare ESX (Score:4, Informative)

    by danpat (119101) on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:25PM (#15374046) Homepage
    VMWare ESX runs without an underlying OS (it provides one of its own). It might be overkill for your needs though....

    http://www.vmware.com/products/esx/ [vmware.com]
    • Re:VMWare ESX (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OiBoy (22100) <caleb@webninja.cEULERom minus math_god> on Saturday May 20 2006, @11:13PM (#15374169) Homepage
      And would be absolutely useless on a laptop since ESX requires SCSI.
      • Does ESX Server Run on Linux? On Windows?
        ESX Server runs natively on server hardware, without a host operating system. The ESX Server virtualization layer is a highly compact and efficient operating system kernel entirely developed by VMware for optimum virtual machine performance. This allows ESX Server to fully manage the hardware resources and provide the highest levels of security and performance isolation. ESX Server also incorporates a service console based on a Linux 2.4 kernel that is used to boot t
          • Nope (Score:3, Insightful)

            ESX is an OS in itself, not derived from Linux. However, ESX includes a "Linux-compatibility layer" that provides compatibility with Linux on some level (drivers, for instance). The console OS is a linux derivative I believe, but the COS is just an interface to the ESX Server OS.
  • It depends... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 222 (551054) * <[stormseeker] [at] [gmail.com]> on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:29PM (#15374058) Homepage
    I've run GSX Server on both Win2k3 64-bit and Suse Enterprise 64-bit, and neither one really presented any issues. The linux configuration is slightly more complicated, but its nothing to really shake a stick at.

    The core issue is which OS are you more familiar with? If that isn't an issue, then there are some benefits to the *nix side of things.

    It's possible to get a linux install down to 200~ megs while only using 64 megs of system memory, which is a strong advantage. If I understand correctly ESX Server is essentially a very very thin linux distro. That should say something ;)

    I've also read of a perl script that can make hot backups of a Virtual Machine; while this is possible under Windows using commercial products, it's another thing to be taken into consideration.

    Hope this helps ;)
  • On my laptop.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Trelane (16124) on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:33PM (#15374071) Journal
    I run Linux, and have VMware around for the (thankfully very very few) times I need to run Windows. With attached storage, I'm thinking about also doing a SuSE image, to help walk my parents through how to do things on their computers.

    So, as a Linux user, I run Linux as the host, and Windows XP & 98 as the guests.

    That's my situation anyway. Things work fine on my laptop under Linux, and I hope my next laptop will be even better (since I'll be ditching ATI on the laptop for Intel (and a linux pre-install, which should give the "works with linux" guarantee even if I don't keep the original install around (plus, I get to give a distro money!)), which will likely make things even easier.)

  • VMWARE on Win32 will only be as stable as Win32 of course. So from that perspective, most people here would agree that Linux makes a better host.

    On the other hand, if you're running a laptop or have some high end video or hard disk that requires drivers not available for linux, you may find your performance better under Windows (again, depending on many things, like how you configure vmware and its use of hardware).

    There's no perfect answer to your question. My plans for new LAPTOPS will be to run the native drivers with Win32 as the host. Custom build desktops, however, I may well run the opposite way.
  • Linux and XFS (Score:4, Informative)

    by jtatum (164201) * on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:44PM (#15374104)
    I've run Workstation and GSX (Server) on Windows and Linux. The best performance by far was Linux with XFS. Ext3 does not cut it (regardless of writeback option used). XFS support is a little tricky to find in VMWare supported distros. For less critical servers, I prefer Centos 4 with the Centosplus kernel (see the Readme [centos.org]). Centos isn't supported by VMWare but Red Hat is.

    VMWare Server supports Ubuntu as a host. It's a little easier to setup XFS and VMWare on Ubuntu. VMWare server claims experimental support for Ubuntu Dapper. I am running it on two servers for testing and it is performing very well. As Ubuntu gains popularity, the choice may be clearer. For right now, Google University has more help for VMWare on Red Hat^W^WCentos than Ubuntu.

    If your system is AMD64/EM64T, you may be tempted to load a 64-bit OS. Resist the temptation. VMWare now claims official support for x64 host operating systems, but in practice these are more trouble to get working than they are worth (MUI, authentication, and even stability can be problematic IMO). With hardware that supports 64-bit virtualization (many new Pentiums and Opterons), 64-bit guests can be run on both 32- and 64-bit hosts. Determining whether your CPU supports it is so difficult, VMWare made a tool to do it for you called the processor check utility. (It's about halfway down this page [vmware.com].) Down the road when 4GB+ is standard on laptops, VMWare's x64 support will probably be a lot better.
    • a word of warning about xfs: make sure you can always shutdown cleanly, or data loss and/or filesystem corruption can easily result. With that caveat in mind, however, XFS totally rocks.
      • Re:Linux and XFS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fimbulvetr (598306) on Saturday May 20 2006, @11:23PM (#15374196)
        Which is exactly why I quit using XFS. For production systems that reboot semi-often and cleanly, XFS is good. When XFS is up for quite some time (On 2.4.x at least, it can tend to get messy after 1yr+ of uptime with heavy writes. Eventually you'll have to umount and do an xfs repair just to get it back to normal.) it's not too good.

        Even worse story for crashes. I've had to go to backup many times because a heavily used system locks up and XFS gets into it's unable to find superblocks or another one of it's infamous cryptic, non documented bugs/errors. I don't recall ever having to do this on a ext3 system unless the disk went bad or it crashed multiple times without a fsck.

        That said, XFS is an excellent choice is some areas, such as realtime (soft guarentee) systems, etc.
  • by ID10T5 (797857) on Saturday May 20 2006, @10:47PM (#15374113)
    Having run VMware (I'm assuming workstation) on both Windows and Linux hosts, I have seen plusses on both.

    VMware needs kernel hooks to provide its virtualization services. Under Linux, there are only a few supported Linux distros (and specific versions at that) that have pre-built modules installed as part of VMware. I run my personal VMware on an FC5 Linux host, and had to download an unsupported "patch" (from one of the VMware developers -- not even hosted on the VMware web site) to allow the vmware-config.pl script to build the necessary modules for my specific kernel. Every time I upgrade kernels, I must then rebuild the modules to get VMware working again. Also, under FC5 with SELinux enabled, I had to manually change the context of one of the VMware files after install before SELinux would even allow VMware to run. Under Windows, all of the above "just works".

    Under Linux, I get better performance when running multiple VM's at the same time. I have had three 384MB VM's running at the same time, and because of memory management under Linux I only saw an increase of approximately 600MB vs. not running the VM's (no swap increase either). I also have better I/O performance as well. When installing the 3 VM's above, I had the CD's mapped to ISO files on the same disk that my VMware files were being created on. During the install, my load average was constantly around 15 and my system was definitely slower, but it was still functional. I have brought a Windows host (with enough memory to host both VM's fully in RAM -- no swapping) to its knees trying to install just 2 VM's simultaneously in the same way (ISO files on the same disk as the VMware files). It was so unresponsive, it took almost 5 minutes to bring up Task Manager to see what was going wrong -- and Task Manager didn't really show me what was wrong, just that the CPU was pegged and the VMware processes were doing all the work.

  • Debian (Score:3, Informative)

    by metamatic (202216) on Sunday May 21 2006, @01:15AM (#15374534) Homepage Journal
    VMware Workstation runs nicely under Debian Testing, with ReiserFS filesystem.
  • VMWare was originally designed to run under linux, and there are still some advantages to running it this way:

    If a usb device has no driver under linux then it can be passed straight through and driven by an os running under vmware (you have to unload native linux drivers for any device you want passed to vmware), the windows version works differently in that you must have a native driver installed before you can pass a device to vmware. This issue has manifested itself many times when we've been at customer sites and presented with a random usb device (usb to serial adapters mainly) for which windows requires extra drivers (and linux includes drivers in the default kernel).

    Performance - networking runs much faster when vmware is running atop linux, this is especially important for me as i`m often doing pentesting which involves lots of network scanning...

    Security - you can nat your windows images behind your base linux install, your base linux can have everything turned off to minimise the chances of it being exploited (windows will often not let you turn some services off)

    And finally, try vmware server as opposed to workstation, you can run it headless and only attach a gui when you want one..
          • I can achieve a 55-60MB sustained write speed (granted, it was in making/transferring large files, not a lot of little ones) and ~70MB read speed on a single 74GB WD Raptor. RAID0 does help with the speed, but it also 1/n the MTBF of the drives, so I wouldn't do it. But if I wanted to, I could simply get two more Raptors and hook them into the spare two SATA ports on my board and let my NForce4 chipset control them in RAID 0 and do so with a much higher transfer rate than a PCI bus can support. 2 WD Raptors