Virtualisation Software

naw · Post by **naw** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 3:33 pm

FYI, as virtualisation becomes increasingly common on PC platforms, I thought folks might be interested in the Virtualisation solutions that I've found (as part of a migration study I did for a customer). In terms of *core functionality* they are all pretty much comparable, its only the more advanced packages like vmWare that adds *lots* of extra features.

I'm posting this because many Linux developers want Windows access and vice versa...

So - here's my shortlist:

vmWare Workstation - definitely the most advanced and most feature rich, also consistently the best performance. Middle of the road cost at about £130
Hefty download at 21.5MB, but its also the most feature rich...
www.vmware.com

MS Virtual PC 2004 - reasonable performance limited extra features, nice support of ISO & IMG FDs, good support of guest OS = middle of the road cost at about $130.
The download 17.5MB is a bit hefty - but hey this is MS SW its all a bit lardy
www.microsoft.com

SVISTA - equivalent features to MS VPC but -very- cheap at only $99. Also the broadest range of Guest & Host OS's
Tiny download at just 2.6MB (MS maybe you could learn something here)
www.serenityvirtual.com

All versions have trial versions available from their WWW sites, vmWare & MS are time limited. SVISTA has its screen partly obscured with a "Trial Version" nag in *500pt* text.

I'd be interested in any other (commercial) alternatives -or- peoples experiences of using these...

Generally speaking, my recommendation is to use the vmWare product, its the most mature and offers the broadest support for guest OS's.

If you need OS2 guests, then MSVPC or SVISTA are good.

If you need OS2 hosts, then SVISTA is the only option

If you need Linux Hosts, MS VPC2004 is no good (though guest VMs are ok)

If you want Linux guest VMs and Hosts, then vmWare is best, then SVISTA

Ta - N[/quote]

Post by **Fred** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:02 pm

You can take a look to QEmu which seems very promizing..

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:38 pm

http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

edit:
lol you call a download at 26 mbyte hefty

i call a download at
4 gb hefty

Karbon · Post by **Karbon** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 1:47 am

VMware is by far the best I've used. Aside from the occasional problem with Windows 98, I can't say I've had any trouble with it. If you need a virtual machine software it is the only way to go.

MS Virtual PC totally takes over this workstation with a single 98 VM booted. With VMWare I can have 3 running at the same time and never notice a difference.... I could care less about download size as long as it WORKS - and there is no way they have anything on par with VPC and VMware in 2 megs.

Hroudtwolf · Post by **Hroudtwolf** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 2:23 am

Which use could have a PureBasicer for a Virtual- PC software?
PB only runs under windows. Virtual-PCs are for using DOS and other OSs at the same time as Windows running.

PB · Post by PB » Fri Mar 11, 2005 3:39 am

> PB only runs under windows

What? PB runs under Windows, Amiga, Linux, and Macintosh...

> Which use could have a PureBasicer for a Virtual- PC software?

I use "Virtual PC" to test my apps on all versions of Windows, without
having to install multiple OSes on my PC. Much faster than booting up
into different OSes just to run an exe.

Hroudtwolf · Post by **Hroudtwolf** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 3:50 am

OK. I'm understanding !

Post by **freak** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 4:36 am

I must say from what i have used so far, VMWare is really the best.
With the VMWare tools installed on the client PC, it offers a good
communication between host an client via the clipboard for example.

I have used Virtual PC only on the Mac. Dunno if the Windows version is different.
However, i had the feeling that it was too much optimized towards a
Windows client os. Where a Win98 or Win2k was quite usable in the emulation,
a Linux installation was barely usable.

Being a big fan of anything free, i really much like Qemu.
It has been improved quite a bit since i first tested it and is really usable now.
There is even a module to speed the emulation up, if you are emulating
a PC on a PC. However, i didn't try that yet.

On the negative side, qemu does need a little getting used to, because it
doesn't come with a gui (however there are many projects allready to fill
that gap). And what is even more missing is something like the
VMWare tools to make communication with the client os easyer.

On the positive side, Qemu supports different host, as well as different
client CPUs. It also doesn't need to install any drivers like VMware does,
but can simply be unpacked and executed.
A very good point is also that you don't need any root or administrator
access to set it up or run it.

VMWare is the best choise imho, but for anyone who doesn't want to
invest the money, Qemu offers a quite good alternative.

Qemu Homepage: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
Downloads for Windows and Mac builds: http://www.freeoszoo.org/download.php

PB · Post by PB » Fri Mar 11, 2005 4:57 am

> I have used Virtual PC only on the Mac. Dunno if the Windows version
> is different. However, i had the feeling that it was too much optimized
> towards a Windows client os. Where a Win98 or Win2k was quite usable
> in the emulation, a Linux installation was barely usable.

I've read numerous reports that since Microsoft bought Virtual PC, the
Linux support has dropped or been downgraded severely. Wouldn't
surprise me! The Connectix version of VPC is the best (the one before
Microsoft took it over).

naw · Post by **naw** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:09 pm

Hi, It true that MS no longer state support for Linux, but Linux does work fine. Also worth considering is the different ways that vmWare and VPC perform their HW emulations. Its my understanding that vmWare passes more instructions directly to the native HW than VPC does, so good news is that vmWare outperforms VPC in every respect.
VPC on the other hand (for instance) emulates an old S3 Trio based Graphics adapter and performs like you might imagine it would. Good news is that this is a _very_ widely supported chipset, so older OS's (eg: OS2) work just fine.

vmWare (I think) requires the guest OS to recognise the Host OS's graphics adapter - so that will be a problem with ancient OS's.

Interestingly, VPC2004 VMs execute without change on VirtualServer2004 (which tells me that there isnt much optimisation / differentiation between MS's 2 products)

vmWare however requires some conversion (which suggests that Wkstn / GSX / ESX are very optimised)

I dont know how SVISTA works - I've tried it with several wierd old OS's and its just fine.

My recommendation is also vmWare. I just want people to be aware that there are alternatives

PB · Post by PB » Fri Mar 11, 2005 9:52 pm

> VPC on the other hand (for instance) emulates an old S3 Trio based
> Graphics adapter and performs like you might imagine it would

Fast?

I don't understand why everyone thinks VPC is slow... it really
flies on my host PC, and I'm talking 95% realtime speed at least. Maybe
vmWare is 100% speed, but 95% is nothing to be ashamed of either.

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:11 pm

I have used and compared vmware and VPC to use Linux redhat, MSDOS, and windows(es) guests on a Windows host OS, and i choosed VPC for it.

Karbon · Post by **Karbon** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 4:34 pm

PB wrote:> VPC on the other hand (for instance) emulates an old S3 Trio based
> Graphics adapter and performs like you might imagine it would

Fast? I don't understand why everyone thinks VPC is slow... it really
flies on my host PC, and I'm talking 95% realtime speed at least. Maybe
vmWare is 100% speed, but 95% is nothing to be ashamed of either.

There is a gigantic difference between a VPC Windows 98 machine running on this box and one using VMWare. You're right in that there *shouldn't* be that big a difference, but there sure is!

naw · Post by **naw** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:27 pm

Of course the difference between 95% and 100% is negligible, but in my experiece, the gap is much wider. Because its emulation, it depends on the speed of the CPU more, so a super fast CPU (like we have today spends so much time waiting for something to do - so VPCs SVGA emultaion is less noticable, but run it on older HW (500MHz) or run several VMs concurrently and believe me you will notice a helluva difference between VPC & vmWare.
Run MS VMs under vmWare under Linux and you'll see another improvement - probably even an improvement over hosting the image on native HW.

dell_jockey · Post by **dell_jockey** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 5:07 pm

one possible usage of VM's wasn't mentioned before, so what follows is how I use virtualisation of hardware:

For my programming, I need to be platform independent and need to test my applications on multiple OS'ses. Either VMWare or VPC can handle that quite nicely.
A nice thing about VM's is that they can be configured to act as a network computer, just like the real ones. I created a source code file share on the host machine. The VM's connect with this share (on Linux as well, using smb). This way, I can maintain a single source code tree, that gets compiled and tested on multiple VM's. I maintain VM's for Win32 (NT4, W2K, XP, W2K3) and two Linux distros (RH & SuSE).

Having a single source code tree and using it on all platforms is a real time saver!