On Monday 18 February 2008 10:00:03 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > So, I'm very interested in VB feedback. Thanks
First thanks all for feedback, and as it may be of interest, here is some
info:
> What about Xen?
Too geeky. JustFine for me, to do a few times; lots of times (and this is a
real answer) and for customers too hard.
>> The networking is a PIA. No sane (IMHO) person would virtualize a desktop.
>> The VMs are servers, so bridged network is needed not the NAT.
> You didn't real the whole manual then. Virtualbox supports the same
> thing via tun/tap devices. I do admit that it is not as easy to set
> up as with vmware though...
Lots of real machines connecting to lots of VMs. Nightmare of routing up/down
etc. Bridge makes it easy.
>> VB keeps time, VMware does not. VMware loses about 10min/hour without and
>> gains about 10min/hour with the VMware-tools installed.
> It depends on what you are running in the guest...
RH9. CentOS-5, SuSE10.x, gutsy even a couple of WXp's.
>> VB keeps the CPU at FULL-SPEED, so the host stays pegged at FULL.
> No, this is definitely not true. Did you also install the virtualbox
> tools in the guest?
I wish ...
No VB running:
processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 107
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2350
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 1000.000
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
cache size : 512 KB
...
VB running:
processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 107
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2350
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 2100.000
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
cache size : 512 KB
Maybe the guest is busy:
top - 09:38:37 up 8 min, 2 users, load average: 1.13, 1.05, 0.59
Tasks: 108 total, 2 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
^^^^^^^^^^^
Mem: 515532k total, 480916k used, 34616k free, 30176k buffers
Swap: 522104k total, 0k used, 522104k free, 332968k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2124 root 15 0 31628 10m 5432 S 0.3 2.1 0:04.82 Xorg
2169 root 15 0 6956 1404 1120 S 0.3 0.3 0:00.50 vboxadd-xclient
And BTW see the guest tools are running!
> The crunch comes in RAM. How much RAM do you have allocated to
> the VM?
> I find that 2Gig total machine RAM is not enough... depending on
> what programs you run within the VM.
Why? I don't use more than two VMs at same time. 512M for most 256M for the
RH9 machines leaving 1G for the host. The linux VMs run servers, the WXp runs
POS GUIs.
So bottom line:
VB has some nice features (integrated mouse etc), keeps time, works well, but
network setup is hard-for-my-customers. Easy enough, but not trivial.
VMware is nice to setup and use, less fancy than VB in desktop features, does
not keep time. (serious and advanced googling not with standing)
XEN is for a different market, so very nice etc etc but does not compete.
Cheers
James
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