Virtulization question.

[wwoods]

By quirk (is that a word ?) of fate I find myself in a situation where I need to use a UNIX like OS (Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSSD etc...) alongside my vista box.

I have decided against a dual boot scenario, because I need both accessable at same time, which leads me to useing either MS Virtual PC 2007 or VM Ware. As for the Guest OS, probably going to go with Linux, not sure wich distro yet, but inside there all pretty much same and I dont need a pretty gui, so I am not terribly worried about graphics card emulation.

My host system is a Vista Ultimate64 laptop, 4gig mem, 360gb disk drives @ 7200rpm (X2), and Intel Core 2 duo @ 2.8ghz so I dont see a issue with that.

What I need some advice is this, Virtual PC 2007 or VMware workstation, I know VMware is $180ish, thats not a issue, what I am looking for is the best solution. Anyone here have experiance with one or both and have some opinions, speed comparisone etc ?

FYI I will be doing bridged networking so the guest OS can get its own IP and not rely on NAT from the host.

 

[johngalt]

Sign up for a beta test of VMWare - Virtual PC is very limited and cannot handle any 64bit OSs at all....

 

[solonfox]

Let's say that what you have described is all that you want to do, in which case I would go with MS Virtual PC 2007 and save the $180 bucks. It will do just what you describe and work just fine.

Now, let's say that you want to swap the VM around, easily swapping HW, CPU, changing the setup to emulate different HW and running many VM's at once. Then, I would go for the VMWare. It all depends on what you want to do.

For a user workstation, I would go with MS Virtual PC - easy. For a group of servers, I would go with VMWare - also, pretty easy with a little thought and planning.

That's my 2 cents.

 

[wwoods]

Sign up for a beta test of VMWare - Virtual PC is very limited and cannot handle any 64bit OSs at all....

Well, that pretty much concludes that then...will do the 30 day trial VMware offers, and drop the 180 if it works out.

Thanks

 

[johngalt]

No, sign up to be a Beta tester of the new Beta - better off that way and you can provide insight.

If Virtual PC supported 64bit OSs I would not have a problem with it - but it is rather ridiculous in this day and age for M$ to be putting out Virt PC for the masses and not supporting 64bit OSs and not releasing at least a toned down version of Hyper-V to the masses as well - which *does* support 64bit OSs and is pretty close to being on par with VMWare, from 2 different reports from 2 people I know. Hyper-V is not as robust, in that it does not have some of the bells and whistles as VMWare, but it is every bit as good in terms of performance, from what they have managed to see of it in using it since RTM.

 

[wwoods]

OK, dident know they were beta testing a new product, thanks.

 

[johngalt]

I just found out myself after I frustratingly blew Virtual PC off my system when I found out it didn't support 64bit (was going to put XP 32 and 64 and Vista 32 - that hosed that plan).

I signed up last week and have it installed and *some* time am going to make the additional OSs....

 

[rlocone]

I have on my system 3 vms. I'm currently testing them all to see how well they work Windows 2000. My work environment requires VPN & IE exclusively. They use Cisco VPN which doesn't work under Vista. My requirements was a 64 bit vm app. Virtual PC and Virtualbox both are Native 64bit. VMWare is not. At current I'm using VMWre. I'd like to use Virtualbox. However, I've encountered some problems with sites not loading correctly. My setup is complicated cause I have the VM bridged. If I could come up with a work around for my issue. I'd go to Virtualbox in a heartbeat. I've noticed a huge increase in speed over WMWare.

 

[johngalt]

Does Virtual Box both *run* on x64 *and* support x64 OSs as guests?

 

[rlocone]

Does Virtual Box both *run* on x64 *and* support x64 OSs as guests?

Here's from the manual

1.3.2 Supported guest operating systems
While VirtualBox is designed to provide a generic virtualization environment for x86
systems, our focus is to optimize the product’s performance for a select list of guest
systems. The following table provides an overview of current support:
Windows NT 4.0 All versions/editions and service packs are fully supported; however,
there are some issues with older service packs. We recommend to install
service pack 6a. Guest Additions are available with a limited feature set.
Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista All versions/editions and service packs
are fully supported. Guest Additions are available.

1 Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5.
2 Preliminary Mac support (beta stage) had been added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6.

3 Support for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox 1.4.
4 Support for OpenSolaris was added with VirtualBox 1.6.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Current version 1.6.2