Nested virtualization when starting VM stuck at 0%

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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Mitchy
Posts: 1
Joined: 16. Aug 2018, 05:12

Nested virtualization when starting VM stuck at 0%

Post by Mitchy »

Hello.

First thank you very much for taking the time to open this thread and read it, any assistance is greatly appreciated, I have hit a brick wall with trying to solve these problems as the majority of use cases I can find with similar problems are being operated within linux operating systems and the troubleshooting steps people are using for Linux is hard to adapt to windows.

I am studying nested virtualization for University and we are attempting to run Virtual Box within a VMware windows host, when I attempt to run oracle from within the VMware VM it goes to starting 0% then no longer works and often freezes the VM it will run within. When running Virtual Box directly upon the host not within a VM it functions correctly. I am hoping somebody might have the time to help me.

I am very confused why I can run VMS directly upon host but when using oracle nested within VMware it will not work, I have tested it on a ThinkStation desktop with 6700 intel cpu at university and it appears to work correctly, is it possible that the 8700 k is the problem?

Some time tonight or tomorrow I will be using nested virtualization with ESX/vsphere/vcenter, I will update this thread on if nested virtualization works within other applications to isolate if it is an incompatible hardware issue that is spread across multiple vendors software.

The system I am running this on is the following.

8700k OC 5ghz.
32 GB 3200 MHZ DDR4 RAM.
Z370 chipset board. (Gaming aorus 5)
250 GB SSD + 4 x internal 3.5" HDD.
AMD 290X GPU
Networking is done via the ethernet ports which I believe is using Intel Ethernet adapter drivers.

The troubleshooting steps I have taken so far.

Enabling/Disabling VT-d on motherboard.
Enabling I/O APIC within virtual box.
Enabling PAE/NX within virtual box.
Enabling VT-x and nested paging in virtual box.

Is it possible that having VT-d on motherboard (can't find VT-x option) is the cause of this problem?

Thank you to everyone for reading this and for any help, assistance or knowledge.
BillG
Volunteer
Posts: 5102
Joined: 19. Sep 2009, 04:44
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows 10,7 and earlier
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Nested virtualization when starting VM stuck at 0%

Post by BillG »

Nested virtualization is not supported in VirtualBox. It may or may not work.

The main problem with nested virtualization is passing things like hardware virtualization (ie VT-x for Intel) through to the vm which is acting as the host for the second stage of virtualization. Without that, lots of things fail in the nested vm.

I am not aware of VT-d having any effect on virtualization, nested or otherwise. VT-x and SLAT (nested paging) certainly do.
Bill
socratis
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VBox Version: PUEL
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Re: Nested virtualization when starting VM stuck at 0%

Post by socratis »

Mitchy wrote:Is it possible that having VT-d on motherboard (can't find VT-x option) is the cause of this problem?
VT-d affects only the PCI passthrough, AFAIK. VT-x can have different names, look for "hardware virtualization" or something similar. It may not even be there and simply enabled.

If you can run VirtualBox (stand-alone), and you can create a 64-bit guest, or a multi-CPU guest, then VT-x is enabled and available.
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