Using Windows in a VM, Best Solution?

[pnunn]

OK, should probably put this to bed. I too do use some closed source stuff when I don't have a choice (hell, I ever run windows when I have to, under kvm though ). I do this virtualization (amoungst other things) as my day job.

At home I have two servers sitting in a rack that run KVM and host 6 to 7 machines each (some windows, some linux), on my laptop I have kvm and virtual box for the windows bits I need for my clients (makes development SO much easier).

In my data racks I have clustered KVM machines having tried, in order of pain, zen, openvz, vmware, eucalyptus, virtual box and kvm with libvert. VMware certainly has the nicest wrapper, but I think, from my testing, that KVM does just as good a job at the virtualization part, at a fraction of the cost, and its supporting an open source model. I know VMWare has a huge install base, but I'm afraid most of the setups I've seen (at clients) are simply put together by brain dead admins who have no clue (I'm NOT aiming that at anyone here, if your here you are CERTAINLY not in that category).

Feel free to use what ever does the job best for you (as is always the case). All I ask is that you look at the alternatives on both small and large scale. With things like open stack and eucalyptus coming along in leaps and bounds, vmware is going to have a run for its money, and that can only be good for all of us.

Have fun with it, its good stuff to play with.

Peter.

[Frank616]

pnunn:

Feel free to use what ever does the job best for you (as is always the case). All I ask is that you look at the alternatives on both small and large scale.

Amen, brother.

Frank.

[claydoh]

I use Virtualbox simply because it works well - for me. This is always subject to change of course. Currently it is a bit easier to install VB
Dang I need more ram, using either tool is not fun with only 2gb.

[Xplorer4x4]

Hey guys, took your advice, and useing vmware player. I see it is limited to 4 cores fyi. I realize I have a quad core cpu with eight threads/HT but always felt that vmware (windows host) used the cores better when using 8 cores. Anyways, I cant seem to get my windows client to see my HDDs. I have added them as shared folders, and rebooted and shut down but no luck. I have vmware tools for windows installed. Do I need it on the host side to? Sadly all google results on this matter are windows host and ubuntu client.

Sent from my DROID2 Global

[SteveRiley]

1. Assign a name to each host path you want to expose to the VM.



2. In your VM, \\vmware-host will appear. Map a drive letter to \\vmware-host\Shared Folders. Then, on that mapped drive, you'll see the names of the host paths you defined in step 1.

[dibl]

Hey guys, took your advice, and useing vmware player. I see it is limited to 4 cores fyi.

If you're seeing only 4 cores, then I would suspect the limitation is not in vmware player -- I can see all 8 hyperthreads being offered as cores on my i7-950:




One would think the i7 2600K would have most of the same flags as a 950, but I'll list mine here anyway:

dibl@imerabox:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 26
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         950  @ 3.07GHz
stepping        : 5
microcode       : 0xf
cpu MHz         : 4217.178
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 11
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips        : 8434.35
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

[Fintan]

Hi Dible, my win 7 runs on 4 cores. The screen you are showing is greyed out here. Thta is probably because I used converter to make an image of my HD installation, and that is (was?) limited to 4 cores.

[dibl]

Hi Fintan -- I hope you're having a nice summer over there in that beautiful place!

OK, this is player ver. 4.0.4, 64-bit, and that VM is Win 7, 32-bit. When I originally tried to install Win 7 64-bit (~2 years ago I think), the Win 7 installation DVD did not see my vmware player (whichever prior version it was) as a 64-bit host and refused to install, so I just used the 32-bit DVD and went on with it. There's nothing about my Windows app that needs the 64-bit system. Subsequently, with later player versions, I've had no problem installing a 64-bit Linux OS, so the 64-bit Win 7 might install now -- I should try it just for the sake of curiosity.

Edit: Yep, it happily installs the 64-bit version of Win 7 now -- I think that was a vmware bug in the version I was using when I bought Win 7.

[Fintan]

Hey Dible, the summer has been nice to us so far . Right I understand. My player 4.x accepted my converted win7 64 bit without complaints, so I would think the latest version would "see the 64bit DVD now. Cheers, almost beer time here

[dibl]

The screen you are showing is greyed out here.

I think I just learned something, playing with this new 64-bit Win 7 VM. You have two ways to adjust the VM settings: (1) when you first start vmware player, if you highlight a VM, then in the lower right area of the window you have the choice to play it or open the settings, and (2) with the VM playing, at the top the middle of the 3 main menus is "Virtual Machine", in which "Settings" is the first menu item. The news flash is, they are not the same. With the VM running, the number of processors settings window is grayed out. But, if you open it from that first method, before running the VM, then that settings window is active. Interesting.

[Fintan]

Hmm.. I found out the reason my screen was greyed out. It was because the last instance of win7 was not shut down correctly, so I had to rebuild after that I can see the screen from within the vmplayer and it lets me choose 8 cores, but since my converter only supported 4 it will not start. From a running guest I noticed the greyed out screen as well. I may do another conversion with the latest vm converter and see if I can get the 8 cores recognized. something for a rainy day

[GreyGeek]

With my new Acer V3-771G I took a fateful step when I moved my data over from my old Acer. I did not bring along the WinXP guest OS backup and I didn't install VirtualBox.

I purchased my old Acer 8 months ago and transfered the WinXP guest OS to it from my old Sony VAIO, which I bought for myself four years ago as a retirement gift. But, the ONLY use I had for the guest XP while it was on the Sony was as a way to run iTunes to backup the gift iPod Touch 4G I got as an Xmas gift two years ago. But, I keep the iPod fully charged and in my pocket only as something my grandsons play with when they are riding with us in the car, or what ever.

For the last 8 months the only thing I did with the guest XP on my old Acer was to boot into it every month or so to update MS Security Essentials and get the latest updates. I had no other use for it. So, on this Acer V3 I decided to forgo installing VB and the guest XP. It's a new milestone. It's the first time in 5 years I haven't had a guest Windows OS running under VB. I suppose I could use VB to run guest installations of other Linux distros, but quite frankly I haven't found one that is as good as Kubuntu. PCLOS, SUSE, Mint KDE and Mandriva come close, but why set in the second chair when you can fiddle in first chair!

[Xplorer4x4]

1. Assign a name to each host path you want to expose to the VM.

Thanks but I managed to get it working on my own. The problem wasn't the mount points but rather the option to list them as network drives. I assumed that by not using this option the HDDs would appear as if it were a native hard drive. Seems that the only option is network storage even if it may not trully be accessing them as network drives(then again maybe it is, not sure how vmware handles this).

If you're seeing only 4 cores, then I would suspect the limitation is not in vmware player -- I can see all 8 hyperthreads being offered as cores on my i7-950:

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I originally had the option to use 8 cores, but when I selected it, I got a pop up that more or less said that vmware player is limited to 4 cores and I needed to upgrade to vmware workstation. Maybe because I installed vmware workstation first, but never used it? Either way it was clear it was not anything I did.


Sent from my DROID2 Global

[dibl]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I originally had the option to use 8 cores, but when I selected it, I got a pop up that more or less said that vmware player is limited to 4 cores and I needed to upgrade to vmware workstation.

Aha -- you, sir, are exactly correct -- it is a feature limitation of vmware-player, and you don't learn about it until you actually try to enable more than 4 cores (which I never did before):




So, I learned something today -- thanks!

[wizard10000]

I use Virtualbox simply because it works well - for me. This is always subject to change of course. Currently it is a bit easier to install VB
Dang I need more ram, using either tool is not fun with only 2gb.

The timesheet application I use at work requires IE8 - I tried using winetricks to get IE running but it wouldn't connect so I ended up installing virtualbox on my netbook, which has 2GB RAM and a 60GB SSD. Giving 1GB to the WinXP VM it boots in less than a minute and while not enjoyable it is tolerable. I don't care to recompile vmware with every kernel upgrade so virtualbox works fine for me

edit: I copied the VM to my laptop, which also has 2GB RAM, a 60GB SSD but has a real Core2Duo and the VM runs acceptably.