Which Linux as a VM host?

[Sysman]

I currently have VirtualBox installed on an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2008, and am looking for alternatives for when the evaluation period expires.

What Linux would you recommend as a VM host?

[CheeseSlice]

Does it need to be an interactive host OS? or are you happy to remotely connect to the VM host?

edit: and what kinds of VM OSes do you need to run? windown, linux, etc?

[Sysman]

I have an AMD64 box which I have so far been using as a VM playground and would rather use that than a remote solution. I've been using VirtualBox, but also XAMPP and Cygwin. It has been mainly for training and evaluation but I'd prefer to turn it into something more like "production" for office use.

I do want to explore the Linuxy side of things, webserver, databases etc., and also have a box I can do the normal webby things / listen to music, and stash documentation.

[ee61re]

Depending on what hardware you are running it on, could you use bare metal Hyper-V server - its free, as I understand it - you just have to license the VMs.

Alternatively, Citrix XenServer is ok - another bare metal platform.

Failing that, Ubtuntu server with Vmware Server on top.

[xchaotic]

If you want to stick with Virtualbox, this rules out VMWare ESX/i which I mentioned in the other thread.
If you're not going to be doing much in the host OS, just choose the distro that you're familiar with, Ubuntu sounds a decent choice.
Just ensure that you go with the 64bit variant so that you can use loads of RAM which VM are very happy with.

[doodab]

Another hypervisor option VMWare server (used to be called GSX I think) which is free now.

Ubuntu is a good choice if you want a linux desktop. I personally like ubuntu server (cut down and sans gui) as a web / application server because it makes a smallish VM that fits nicely on my laptop as a "dev box". Oracle Enterprise Linux is binary compatible with Redhat which is an advantage for running commercial software such as oracle DB without the excess faffing and library jiggling that getting something running on an unsupported distro sometimes involves.

[TheFaQQer]

Linux Mint, running VMWare.

[VectraMan]

edit: and what kinds of VM OSes do you need to run? windown, linux, etc?

Why does that matter?

I use VirtualBox running on Windows 7 x64 all the time, but I also had the machine dual booting into Ubuntu and after some faffing had all the same VMs running in VirtualBox in that. Unfortunately VB Windows and VB Linux have incompatible config files .

[Sysman]

I use VirtualBox running on Windows 7 x64 all the time, but I also had the machine dual booting into Ubuntu and after some faffing had all the same VMs running in VirtualBox in that. Unfortunately VB Windows and VB Linux have incompatible config files :suicide:.

Ouch. Very early on with VB I discovered that the config files on Windows are linefeed terminated, so I was hoping they'd be compatible. Still, there's that 400+ page manual to read

I tried VB on Fedora 14 over the weekend but couldn't get GuestAdditions installed.

Yesterday's problem was actually getting Linux (Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora 14 tried so far) dual booting with Windows. There's plenty of (often dated) advice out there about doing it on a single disk, but I was trying to spread OS's across disks and much gnashing of teeth ensued. I ended up doing a fresh install of Windows Server to get a bootable system, and set off a restore of the lot before going home.

I got as far as downloading VMware, but haven't had chance to install it yet. I'll let you know how I get on.

My dual boot problem probably merits a thread of its own...

[VectraMan]

Ouch. Very early on with VB I discovered that the config files on Windows are linefeed terminated, so I was hoping they'd be compatible. Still, there's that 400+ page manual to read

They have different options for things like sound and network IIRC. A bit of fiddling and cut and paste and I managed to get it going, but it might be easier to just create new VMs. You can use the same VHDs, so it's not a big problem.

Yesterday's problem was actually getting Linux (Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora 14 tried so far) dual booting with Windows.

Been there too. I'm sure I had this going at one stage, but my final setup was with mirrored disks and whilst it all worked first time with Windows 7, I just couldn't get the boot loader for Ubuntu to work no matter what. And posting on the Ubuntu forums got zero replies, and nobody here seemed to have a clue either. But I found I liked running W7 so much that I gave up on Linux, and still have a 100GB partition with an unusable Ubuntu on it I should probably put to some other use.