virtualbox.org

Currently I've got an enterprise windows 2003 HOST server with 5 virtualbox GUEST servers running perfectly on it.

Other than some small configuration differences, is there anything I can expect to be a major problem with migrating my HOST windows 2003 server to linux?

Considering I'm moving .vdi files and everything onto the Linux box. Or is it just a bad idea all around and I should suffer with the windows 2003 HOST and not move the GUESTS from windows to Linux?

I'd like to add the reason why I want to do this, primarily that is for the ability to run these servers in the background. In other words, on my windows box I run them at the console level under the administrator's user. So if the power goes out, so does those boxes until I login again.

I've tried a few things to run them as services, but no such luck. Additionally, I'm wanting to gain the better networking abilities that linux has as opposed to windows horrible networking.

one problem that you might find is that everything runs faster on linux due to not having to have antivirus software running.

oh and you don't have to pay microsoft for a "pro" or "enterprise" version to use multiple cores or 64-bit, with linux you get that for free.

also you might find you have more free memory from not having a load of adware and code bloat that comes with windows.

stability could be a problem - its something you've probably not heard of with windows hosts. you know - when you don't have to reboot every few hours due to crashes

seriously though, i can't see any problem with switching hosts, other than you might have to edit your virtualbox.xml file to change the paths to the vdi images, also your network adaptor will have a different name.

i'd try it on a spare host server so you have no downtime, rather than just blatting windows and installing linux over the top.

Hah! Thanks for the response! You definitely speak the truth!

I first started using Windows when MS opened its first shop in the UK. Our company was amongst the first to adopt NT4. However, I still prefer Linux to current Windows OSs since I feel it is a real OS.

I hear that!

I've had a lot of issues with windows and I'm definitely not going to hear someone tell me that I'm not using it properly, I go by Microsoft's instructions and have my MCSE and MCSD and have been working with windows for a very long time now, and no matter how much they try to improve there is always a problem with stability, and the features they try to add.

And to compare uptime, one of my Linux boxes has been up running strong and not been restarted for almost 8 months now. No power failure, nothing. My longest running windows box is 20 days, and that's pushing it. There's always a problem with the memory getting clogged and is hoses up the applications and requires a restart to fix.

And I'm not trying to flame Microsoft, they've helped me make a lot of money in software development and support calls. If anything, as far as my wallet is concerned, they've been very good to me. But when it comes to wanting to take care of my customers and wanting to make money, I still see that Linux is a viable OS that does the job very well, with little hiccups and to top it off, even though I'm taking far less support calls I'm able to focus a lot more on application development time and improvements for my customers.

Hands down, Linux wins.

I just finished debugging a script that starts a Virtualbox VM during the boot-up of my (SuSE 10.3) linux box. I called it "vboxstart" and it uses VBoxHeadless to run the VM in the background. It is now permenantly a part of this linux box's boot process.

It uses a config file that contains the UUID for the machine to be started at boot. The config file also contains the login name of the owner for the VM so that the machine can be started using sudo (to the user, not as root): To stop the process during the shutdown of linux, I use: This makes the shutdown and next boot run much faster. I actually did a "vboxstart restart" on the host machine while using tightvnc against the guest. tightvnc did not notice the short interval that the VM was down. I am blown away by this!

This is on a spare computer with 640megs memory (256megs for the guest, the rest for the host). This VM is my FTP server running on a 5gig partition (the FTP stores are on another server connected to with SAMBA).

I have the VM running vncserver so I can connect to it using tightvnc. It is sweet.

I can post the information if there is any interest.