Suspend with XEN?

[tgalati4]

I don't understand the use case that the OP is trying to solve. Dual-boot might be a better choice. We went from trying to put Xen to sleep to running Win8 and Linux at the same time.

[TheFu]

I don't understand the use case that the OP is trying to solve. Dual-boot might be a better choice. We went from trying to put Xen to sleep to running Win8 and Linux at the same time.

I agree. Either he wants to learn about Enterprise-class virtualization for servers .... or he wants to run a desktop. Very different use cases with very different tools. It is possible to cheat, just a little, on either side, server or desktop, provided the user understands the limitations of each.

If virtualizing desktops and running local is what he wants, then Xen, KVM, QEMU, LXC, UML, ESXi, OpenVZ, and all the commercial versions of those are not what he needs.

[thenoname]

I said:


Whoa! This is the first time you mentioned Windows. Running a desktop OS brings completely different requirements into play. Xen and KVM are primarily designed to run server OSes, not desktops/GUIs.

Can you explain the "configured VM CPU with vt-x?" That doesn't make sense to me. Inside a client VM, vt-x should not be seen/possible. It is needed on the physical server, but not inside each guest. I'm probably just misunderstanding. I don't believe it is possible to enable VT-x for anything except an entire physical server. Please teach me.

Did you try the spice video to connect to the VM? How are you connecting to Win8? I use RDP to Win7 and it works fine for normal desktop apps, but not for video or audio. Avoid using VNC (the built-in desktop connection method). RDP feels about 5x faster than the built-in VNC that virt-manager provides. Also, did you follow normal VM setup "best practices" for CPU, RAM, network and disk devices?

If you want to run a desktop inside a VM and access it for desktop-like needs, especially if it is Windows, most people are better off using VirtualBox. The graphics in virtualbox are good enough for video and lite-gaming. I run Win7 inside a KVM VM - it records TV for the house. It cannot be used to watch the recorded or live TV - other devices are used for that. That same KVM host runs 6 other VMs too - all Linux servers. Linux virtualizes much better than Windows, IME.

Linux desktops can work well inside a KVM VM, with a good remote desktop setup. I use FreeNX. My daily use "desktop" is a Linux install running inside a private cloud ... KVM + freenx on the server. Again, video and audio don't work well. If that is a requirement, you'll **need** Spice+KVM or just install VirtualBox.

VirtualBox includes trade-offs too. If you intend to run 1 VM and it is a desktop running on a desktop, you won't care, but if you want concurrent server VMs running and need fantastic stability, then KVM is a better choice.

There is way to copy all flags of the cpu to your VM's cpu. I use virt-manager, open the VM, in "show virtual hardware detail"/Processor/Configuration then Copy host CPU configuration. Now i can have every cpu feature in the VM.

[tgalati4]

Some computers require setting VT-x features in BIOS--presumably to get the motherboard to play nice when serving several virtual machines. Setting VT-x as part of the VM's CPU configuration doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure that it is ignored in the VM. The host kernel would need to support VT-x to get the performance benefits, but I'm not sure how VT-x is interpretted in the VM.

Has anyone run Windows8 using VirtualBox? What is the performance like?