Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

This is for discussing general topics about how to use VirtualBox.
martyscholes
Posts: 202
Joined: 11. Sep 2011, 00:24
Primary OS: Solaris
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win 7, Ubuntu, Win XP, Vista, Win 8, Mint, Pear, Several Linux Virtual Appliances

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by martyscholes »

Excuse me for interrupting. Have you see this from the OVM people?

http://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/so ... ed_zone_vm

You can create (nest) zones within this S10 template, as it's a full S10U10 install running on HV with Solaris 11 Dom0.
With one or more of these templates installed in S11, it seems you could implement your nefarious plans without even needing a new BE. Or even a reboot of S11 for that matter.... 8)
Very cool. No, I hadn't seen that, but it wouldn't have worked, because I was running a butchered OpenSolaris build 128a instead of Solaris 10. Worse, look at http://www.sun-rays.org/lib/hardware/su ... 660-08.pdf at the top of page 17. We use Sun Ray devices and that software can only go into the global zone. Of the 10 hours I spent setting up the server, well over half of that time was spent getting SRSS working. Thanks for passing along the link.
Seems like the tech has been constrained by the hardware for years, no?
I don't know. I used DOS/VSE quite a bit back in the day and never used VM, but that software was released what, almost 40 years ago? So here we are, well into the 21st century, and VB is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but we still haven't caught up to IBM from before the disco era.

Something does not compute.
allpoints
Posts: 28
Joined: 27. Dec 2011, 10:26
Primary OS: Solaris
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linuxes, Win8

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by allpoints »

martyscholes wrote:
Excuse me for interrupting. Have you see this from the OVM people?

http://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/so ... ed_zone_vm

You can create (nest) zones within this S10 template, as it's a full S10U10 install running on HV with Solaris 11 Dom0.
With one or more of these templates installed in S11, it seems you could implement your nefarious plans without even needing a new BE. Or even a reboot of S11 for that matter.... 8)
Very cool. No, I hadn't seen that, but it wouldn't have worked, because I was running a butchered OpenSolaris build 128a instead of Solaris 10. Worse, look at http://www.sun-rays.org/lib/hardware/su ... 660-08.pdf at the top of page 17. We use Sun Ray devices and that software can only go into the global zone. Of the 10 hours I spent setting up the server, well over half of that time was spent getting SRSS working. Thanks for passing along the link.
a couple observations:

1. While 100% backwards compatibility between S10u10 and your S9 snv may not be assured, it may be guaranteed by Oracle... :wink:

2. Do not see how Sun Ray Server knows it's on a S10 DomU? Follow my superficial reasoning... We call it a template or a zone, but it's not a standard S11 zone like a branded S10 zone would be. It's an hardware VM that thinks it has its own hypervisor, can run zones of its own, and the OS virtualization nesting barrier doesn't apply until you enter a nonglobal zone on the S10 instance (template) and attempt to run zonecfg..

The OVM S10 Template is not "as virtualized" as a default S11 zone and should therefore be able to run your Sun Ray Server on its global zone unless something specifically prohibits it from doing so, like hardware crypto requirements or backwards compatibility.

Understand though, that I'm speaking from a position of ignorance about Sun Ray server... :?


Seems like the tech has been constrained by the hardware for years, no?
I don't know. I used DOS/VSE quite a bit back in the day and never used VM, but that software was released what, almost 40 years ago? So here we are, well into the 21st century, and VB is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but we still haven't caught up to IBM from before the disco era.

Something does not compute.
apples, oranges...

didn't VSE consider another frame to be a self powered file system running under the same OS?
Keeny
Posts: 1
Joined: 5. Feb 2012, 17:04

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by Keeny »

Dear forumers
As newbe I have a question.
I rent VPS with win serv 2008 on it and 4 IP binded.
i'm going to install VB 4.1.8 and put in it 4 machines winNT4.0server
Would it be possible to configure that to work them to cooperate with its own IP? And what is more important:
on each machine I would like to start the same application (simple online gaming) that is broadcasting only port 1808 (permanently written in the compilation)
Please advise is it sense to start to digg with such idea.
shnewbie
Posts: 1
Joined: 6. Feb 2012, 13:24

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by shnewbie »

In my company, we get virtualized Windows 2008 machines to work with. I have been able to install VirtualBox 4.1 on it and create and run 32-bit Linux EL5 guests. I have not seen any issues. I am not able to create 64-bit VMs at it requires hardware support. Is it somehow possible? It will help me greatly as I do not have access to raw hardware!

Thanks,
sh
easy12377
Posts: 1
Joined: 8. Apr 2012, 16:18

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by easy12377 »

I see in two posts that it is possible to run openvz inside virtualbox, and I tried it by myself but end up with a kernelpanic when I want to use the oprnvz-kernel ( 2.6.32-042stab049.6) inside a CentOS 5.8 installation with virtualbos 4.1.8.

Are there any special settings needed to get this setup running?

Win7 (64-bit)
---> virtualbox
-----> CentOS
-------> openvz
---------> our application


Thanks

Regards Markus
Jimmy123
Posts: 54
Joined: 29. Dec 2010, 22:37
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by Jimmy123 »

hi guys,

i tried something crazy, i thougt it would surely fail !

i installed VB 4.1.16 within a guest (win 7)

unbelievable, but it installed without any trouble

i could even install the extension pack without trouble

it was just an experiment

i saw that all 3D stuff was grayed out in the VB installed in the guest.

the win 7 guest runs in VB 4.1.8 on win 7 64 bit

i did not install a guest within this guest (do not dare to)

but a im indeed curious to see if it would work ?????

Jimmy
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by mpack »

Jimmy, you seem to have a very strange way of formatting all of your recent messages which makes them very hard to read. Please try to use complete sentences, paragraphs, and ideally use proper capitalisation and punctuation too.
Jimmy123
Posts: 54
Joined: 29. Dec 2010, 22:37
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by Jimmy123 »

i allways use short sentences !
english is not my native language
at least my english is understandable
WhyWontThisWork
Posts: 3
Joined: 9. Jan 2013, 06:31

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by WhyWontThisWork »

vbox4me2 wrote: As a general rule of thumb, most Virtualization packages do not support running another such package inside it, it is like trying to install XP inside a running XP, that will not work either.
I found this confusing, XP can run in XP with something like virtualbox .. Thank you for the information though!
mpack
Site Moderator
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VBox Version: PUEL
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Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by mpack »

WhyWontThisWork wrote:I found this confusing, XP can run in XP with something like virtualbox .. Thank you for the information though!
That isn't what he said. What he said was that you can't run one VM package inside another, so the following will not work :-

VBox installed inside a VBox VM.
VBox inside a VMWare VM.
VMWare VM inside VBox.
VBox inside Hyper-V (VM or debugger).
 Edit:  In fact I'm told that running VBox inside a VMWare VM might be possible, but it isn't supported. 
Last edited by mpack on 5. Apr 2013, 11:36, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Added correction.
stupidgirl
Posts: 1
Joined: 22. Apr 2013, 03:33

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by stupidgirl »

In the spirit of keeping everybody safe from themselves or being banned outright from this board, I must make the following disclaimer: I do not particularly recommend replicating my experiment. If you do, then you do so at your own risk to your system, hardware, life, and most of all, personal integrity and reputation. (i.e., don't blame me if it ruins you)

I have successfully(?) gotten VirtualBox to work within VirtualBox. Maybe that's not supposed to work, or maybe that is considered unethical or morally wrong or impolite or politically incorrect, but I did get it to work.

From a CentOS host, I had had VirtualBox host running 4.1 (throughout, please assume I have the latest GA in whatever guests are running; this was never an issue). What I wanted to do was test out 4.2 without having to shut down my VMs and physical hardware. So I created a CentOS guest VM on the same host, applied the GA, and made sure that was all stable.

Then I installed VirtualBox 4.2 host in the CentOS guest. So I actually had the VirtualBox host 4.2 and the VirtualBox Guest 4.1 software running in that same CentOS guest. There was a claim made here that this was the part that cannot be done, but I did it. Perhaps running two separate architectural releases is the key, idk; I did not try any other combination. Again, my purpose was to simply evaluate the 4.2 version, and nothing else. I thought this was clever, and it seemed to work.

I was able to install a Guest by using an ISO image from the hardware host. In the CentOS guest, I mounted file shares from the host, including a path to where I keep my ISO collection (I am a distro junkie, sorry. Yeah, I was a lonely kid... but anyway). It was then a simple matter of selecting an ISO to install to the 4.2 guest of the 4.1 guest. It successfully installed and ran. However...

At that time, I did not have the horsepower or memory I do now. I was using an Athlon II x2 running about 3200MHz with no threading; I beileve I was still running in 4MB, and there may have been a couple other VMs running also. Although I was able to click and type into the guest of the guest, the response times were infuriatingly slow; even with no other VMs on the host, it was not usable. So, the moral of that story -- I guess -- is make sure you have the processing power and memory to do this.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
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Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by mpack »

There's no need for the sinister hoodoo. VBox within VBox is not supported - no more, no less. It was not designed to work in that way. That doesn't mean you can never fudge it into working after a fashion, it just means that if it goes wrong in any way then any help you get will be purely coincidental.
Ramshankar
Oracle Corporation
Posts: 792
Joined: 7. Jan 2008, 16:17

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by Ramshankar »

Nested hardware virtualization is *not* possible with VirtualBox, meaning - you cannot expose hardware virtualization features to the guest and have those features used by another Virtualizer (VirtualBox or otherwise) to run another guest.

Running pure, software virtualized guests within a hardware virtualized VirtualBox *is* possible, although the performance may be bad for the nested guest.

Ideally, for having a decent performing nested virtualization with VirtualBox, we would need to implement nested hardware virtualization and expose hardware virtualization features on the host to the guest. Obviously, we haven't got around to doing this yet.
Oracle Corp.
Technologov
Volunteer
Posts: 3342
Joined: 10. May 2007, 16:59
Location: Israel

Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by Technologov »

The good news, is that the new CPU, Intel Core i7 4770 "Haswell" supports nested hardware virtualization (VMCS shadowing).
So it would be good to enable this new feature in VirtualBox.
michaln
Oracle Corporation
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Re: Virtualization inside a virtualizer, discussions

Post by michaln »

Technologov wrote:The good news, is that the new CPU, Intel Core i7 4770 "Haswell" supports nested hardware virtualization (VMCS shadowing).
So it would be good to enable this new feature in VirtualBox.
Have a patch to contribute? Or 10,000 licenses waiting for this feature? :)
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