vmware to vbox migration?

piedoggie · Post by **piedoggie** » 13. Sep 2007, 20:57

I'm looking to migrate from vmware server to *something else*. here is what is important to me:

host initiated automatic clean shutdown of guests when host shuts down (I always forget about at least one guest :-)

no-graphics-needed on start up (who installs X11 on a server)

no post kernel update tools recompile (rebuilding vmtools just to get an ethernet driver is for the birds. I can not count the number of times I've upgraded the kernel with a security update only to find I've lost ethernet on my guest)

io contention. (it seems that vmware does not do well when you have heavy disk io especially when you have 2 guests hitting the disks at the same time)

so how well does vbox cope?

Technologov · Post by **Technologov** » 15. Sep 2007, 01:16

>host initiated automatic clean shutdown of guests when host shuts down (I always forget about at least one guest

VBox supports CLI. You can script it.

>no-graphics-needed on start up (who installs X11 on a server)

VBox supports RDP for remote GUI and virtual serial port... whatever you prefer.

>no post kernel update tools recompile (rebuilding vmtools just to get an ethernet driver is for the birds. I can not count the number of times I've upgraded the kernel with a security update only to find I've lost ethernet on my guest)

I'm afraid this is fundamental Linux issue, not VirtualBox/VMware one. Linux kernels and modules are NOT binary compatible with each other, not forward and no backward compatibility, so this problem will stay.

>io contention. (it seems that vmware does not do well when you have heavy disk io especially when you have 2 guests hitting the disks at the same time)
>so how well does vbox cope?

Not very good, but it works.

Hope, I helped

-Technologov

piedoggie · Post by **piedoggie** » 15. Sep 2007, 05:37

Technologov wrote:>host initiated automatic clean shutdown of guests when host shuts down (I always forget about at least one guest :-)

VBox supports CLI. You can script it.

>no-graphics-needed on start up (who installs X11 on a server)

VBox supports RDP for remote GUI and virtual serial port... whatever you prefer.

>no post kernel update tools recompile (rebuilding vmtools just to get an ethernet driver is for the birds. I can not count the number of times I've upgraded the kernel with a security update only to find I've lost ethernet on my guest)

I'm afraid this is fundamental Linux issue, not VirtualBox/VMware one. Linux kernels and modules are NOT binary compatible with each other, not forward and no backward compatibility, so this problem will stay.

I was afraid of that. In the "it would be nice" category, it would be nice if there was some mechanism/script one could run to detect a kernel update and rebuild whatever modules necessary. Personally, the biggest problem I have with vm specific modules is that I frequently don't have the right include files for that for kernel version (until I create the right dependencies with apt) and by the time I discover this, I've lost my ethernet driver and net access. Detecting failure conditions like these and alerting one to it would be wonderful.

>io contention. (it seems that vmware does not do well when you have heavy disk io especially when you have 2 guests hitting the disks at the same time)
>so how well does vbox cope?

Not very good, but it works. ;)

well, hope it's not much worse than vmware. :-)

Hope, I helped

-Technologov

you did, thank you.