Can someone share their experience with Virtual machine options like Windows Server, VMware, KVM, VirtualBox etc,
I self host a single server KiqsRocks.com and have now purchased a Dell rack server where I plan to relocate my existing server and add 3 or 4 additional virtual machine. MineOS looks perfect for my plans, but I need to decide on the virtualization.
I have many years of software experience, Expert on windows, Competent on Linux, Some experience with VMware Player.
I believe supporting developers is the only way to ensure there work continues. If I decide to use MineOS I will be contributing to the cause for each virtual machine I run.
Old VMware server software as a service on windows: Works, but is outdated and no longer properly run
Windows server VM: Could not get a stable network connection, and could not get the *nix OS I used (probabaly ubuntu server) to accept the NIC presented by the VM. Probably config errors but I gave up.
VMware OS type VM host: Needs (needed) spesific server hard hardware. As I build my own servers from home /gaming type hardware it laced support for a lot. Managed to get MineOS running, but again stranded on NIC support. This time it was the VM that would not recognise my HW NIC.
Virtualbox: Running it now on a windows server. Needs addons to run *box as a service, and have a web GUI. Other than that: no issues.
My chosen MineOS environment is manually repositiory installed on Ubuntu server.
Thanks iMelsom, for your response. I hope others respond too.
If I understand, your server boots to Ubuntu and from there you run multiple Virtualbox machines running MineOS.
In the other configurations you had difficulty getting NIC to work. Just to be clear, you were unable to get internet traffic to forward to the virtual machines and/or could not get the virtual machines to see the internet. Is that correct?
My DELL server has hardware and bios support for virtual machines so I was looking at VmWare Hypervisor ESXi. However, It is really expensive. I’ll look into Virtualbox.
Other than that, Virtualbox is available on ubuntu server (and quite likely other *nix servers) as well as windows and mac, but do not have it’s own stand alone bare metal install.
It’s much more lightweight, though it is not as graphically user-friendly. Docker does have a bit of learning curve, though, with containers and the like, but it is nicely and cleanly isolated and has less memory overhead.
I have been using VirtualBox as it has the least trouble in getting running. Also it’s free and requires little in additional add-one.
I generally use “bridges” networking as the shares the host’s NIC but gets its own IP.
Thanks to everyone who commented. It’s fantastic to see such great community support.
I started out trying to use the free version of vSphere Hypervisor and while I love the concept, the learning curve was ultimately going to be more than I was willing to take on. I did get the virtual LAMP stack running, but could not get it to be visible on the network.
I watched some youtube videos, (most assumed knowledge I did not have) and then signed up for vSphere training. I found it dumbed down to the level of a bright high school student (or corporate exec.) to the point that they would show a slide and read what was on the screen. (frustrating) About an 2 hours in I knew a whole lot about what it COULD do and nothing about HOW to do anything. I'm sure answers to all my questions were in there somewhere, but didn't have the time to do all that digging.
I’m Windows guy since Win 3.1, and Linux on VmWare for the last few years so for the heck of it I installed Windows 10, Virtual Box, and the Turnkey LAMP iso. I switched VBox Network from NAT to Bridged and everything just works. Windows 10 is not listed as compatible with the Dell Rack server I’m running but it seems to be chugging along just fine. BTW Windows Servers versions are just too expensive.
I’ll ultimately be able to run up to 1 core for LAMP, 6 virtual game machines 1 on each core, and then leave 1 cores for Windows.
Finally I plan to buy another of these machines and try vSphere again when I have more time available. Thanks for the links everyone provided, I checked each of them out and bookmarked them so I can revisit these when I get the another machine.
It lets you run your virtalbox images as a windows service in the background, instead of having to run the Virtualbox software active.
This means you also needs this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpvirtualbox/ (needs a webserver with PHP)
It gives you a WebUI to manage your Virtualbox, since the Virtualbox software, and vmboxvmservice is not to happy running together…
I have the vboxservice program and thanks for pointing out the issue with the virtual box software.
On my primary computer, I’m using Windows Remote Desktop Connection to take control of the Dell server on my second monitor. It’ like I’m sitting right there and works great.
I think I will not use vboxservice since there is an alternative.
I have Windows on the Dell configured so that it does not require a login so it just completely boots up. In Virtual Box, you can right click on the machine and click Create Shortcut.
If I drag the shortcut to the Windows Startup folder. It will run on bootup. I will eventually add a batch file to the Startup folder to run each virtual machine a few seconds apart.
