Need Recommendation for Virtualization Solution for Lab/home that's easy to setup

[kendoori]

We have a lab box that's currently running Win2k3. That server has WAMP on it, but also some virtual machines that are beginning to cut into its resources. I would like to P2V the machine, and build/buy a new box that has enough RAM to properly support 2-3 VMs running simutaneously (Win2k3, Ubuntu, etc...). Nothing is very processor intensive on any of these instances. This is going to run in a spare room at home, so likely desktop form factor and relatively quiet is what I want to do.

I use 12.04 as my daily driver for desktop and am considering some flavor of Ubuntu as the host for this as I'm comfortable with it. I have some prebuilt machines in VirtualBox and VMWare all ready to go.

I don't really want to spend a lot of time learning VMWare eSXI, so am looking for a relatively easy recipe to make this all go, including some possible hardware recommendations. Perhaps something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-8200-Elit...item3cd04a2484

Would appreciate any comments on this... and if there is a good recipe/cookbook out there on the web, would appreciate this.

[CharlesA]

Proxmox is a baremetal hypervisor, so you would install it on the hardware and manage your guests via web interface.

I've been thinking about migrating to it, but so far I've been sticking with running VBox headless on my server.

That server on ebay looks very similar to mine (well the guts do at least, as mine is in a desktop case).

I've been running an i7 2600K, 16GB RAM, 500GB OS drive and 4TB drive array on my server. The VMs are stored on the array.

[kendoori]

Proxmox looks good, but would prefer to find something with no cost. If I'm reading their website right, theirs is a subscription model.

[CharlesA]

Forgot about that bit.

You could try running KVM or even OpenVZ, but KVM (with virtmanager might work fine for you).

[gordintoronto]

Is there something you want to do which VirtualBox won't do?

[dcstar]

We have a lab box that's currently running Win2k3. That server has WAMP on it, but also some virtual machines that are beginning to cut into its resources. I would like to P2V the machine, and build/buy a new box that has enough RAM to properly support 2-3 VMs running simutaneously (Win2k3, Ubuntu, etc...). Nothing is very processor intensive on any of these instances. This is going to run in a spare room at home, so likely desktop form factor and relatively quiet is what I want to do.

I use 12.04 as my daily driver for desktop and am considering some flavor of Ubuntu as the host for this as I'm comfortable with it. I have some prebuilt machines in VirtualBox and VMWare all ready to go.

I don't really want to spend a lot of time learning VMWare eSXI
.........

If you want to use VMs from within a 12.04 Desktop (manually starting them etc.) then use the free VMware Player, if you want to have a true headless Hypervisor that automatically runs VMs then the free ESXi is not that hard to get going with - the main issue is that it requires a Windows PC to manage it.

[kendoori]

I'm most comfortable with Virtualbox, so I'm going to give a shot at doing a headless setup. I'm also going to see if I can make this work on my Dell Optiplex 755 by adding some RAM (get it to 8 GB) and installing a small SSD to run the base OS from it. I'm afraid of compatability issues with eSXi. Any tips on the vBox setup on Ubuntu server? or should I run a different distro?

[gordintoronto]

Is memory so tight you need to run Ubuntu Server? Desktop can do everything Server can do, it just has a tiny bit of overhead -- and a lot less learning curve!

[CharlesA]

Is memory so tight you need to run Ubuntu Server? Desktop can do everything Server can do, it just has a tiny bit of overhead -- and a lot less learning curve!

+1. I run the server edition of 12.04, mostly cuz I don't need a GUI and the machine just sits in the corner and does it's thing.

That being said, the VBox gui is way more friendly than the CLI (which is why I use phpvirtualbox to manage my VMs.)

[dcstar]

Is memory so tight you need to run Ubuntu Server? Desktop can do everything Server can do, it just has a tiny bit of overhead -- and a lot less learning curve!

The server kernels are compiled with different options and do not support various desktop things like sound, hotplug USB etc.

Having said that, the GUI with any of the desktop options does make like easier in general and you can always use the server kernel for maximum efficiency.