Martin Nix wrote:
Vmware server seems to run XP at about 50% of native performance (rough
visual estimate) - this is if the VM support flags are on or off in the
BIOS, so not sure if Vmware is really taking good advantage of this.
It obviously depends a lot on what it is doing. I have found in the past
that installing a decent graphics driver into a normal PC can make a big
difference, and with a VM you don't have that option (yes I know there
is a driver, it's just not in the same class as 3d drivers for current
cards because the emulated card itself is not up to that much). For
other stuff where the GUI isn't important I've often found near-native
performance is there's nothing else going on with the host (albeit that
not much in XP doesn't need the GUI).
From what I have seen the virtualisation support is pretty much the same
across the VM products, this is the first system where I would say I'm close
to it being usable but I know there is unlocked potential there - hence the
Xen experiment
I'm very interested to know how you get on (laptop or not). I'd like to
go down this route with my home desktop (I chose the CPU specifically
for VT support), but I've never got far with Xen (I did try playing some
time ago, way before Xen 3, and got into a muddle with a mixture of
conflicting HowTos and a lack of fundamental knowledge).
I'm intending to virtualise under Fedora 8 (base install) as the host OS and
then as Guest the following Virtual machines :
Is F8 a choice because of the virtualisation, or just your preferred
distro anyway? Had mixed experience with Fedora (mostly I just hate yum)
but ought to give it another spin.
4) Windoze Vista - just to see what it is like (and then have the intense
satisfaction of deleting it when I find out how bad it really is)
Just FYI: Vista used to have a licence which prevented its use in
virtual machines (at least in home versions) but that's now been lifted.
Here is the cpuinfo (it's a 2.5GHz not 2.4 as I said before), the important
bit for virtualisation (I believe) is the vmx flag which is apparent
Indeed, vmx is the important bit. I note you have your CPUs running at
800MHz which is better than I get out my crusty old Athlon (they only go
down to 1000MHz as it stands) but I have no idea if that's something I
can tune?
VMWare server doesn't give you any closer binding to the hardware but XEN
does as it is a custom kernel - I emphasize that this is an experiment that
may go horribly wrong.
That's what makes life so much fun!
I'm very keen to see how it handles hardware support. My understanding
is that this is down to the hypervisor (in your case F8) to choose, and
obviously if you want to show three operating systems running in windows
on your desktop then you have to virtualise the graphics somewhere, but
it ought to be possible to get proper 3D performance from a non-windowed
but still virtual O/S. Assuming you want each VM to have its own network
connectivity they can't "share" that hardware either, and similar
problems occur with USB and other devices. So I'm sure its more
complicated than it sounds.
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