virtualbox.org

Hi,
I want to set-up a computer just to run multiple virtual machines, planning on a Intel i7 with lots of RAM.

But what operating system would be the best host, Linux or Windows?

I have previously used virtual box on windows7 running some test computers and on Ubuntu and havent noticed any performance differences on either.
The guest operating systems will all be Windows based.

Any thoughts?

(im only including windows & linux as windows is the OS we use for all office computers, and linux is a cheaper and apparently faster alternative, MAC OS just drives me nuts)

A troll if ever I heard one. Still, it might be fun...

Linux is faster? You don't often hear that! However it's one of those vague claims that is impossible to disprove (disproving would require testing every Linux PC vs every Windows PC, and proving that the latter is always faster). However we can apply logic.

• Linux is a committee design, built by hobbyists in their spare time.
• Windows is a team design where the team knows that the object of their endevours is going to be picked apart and aggressively tested by fans, by enemies, and by the computer mags.

You tell me which one you expect to be fastest.
Linux is however cheapest (if bundling doesn't count), and sometimes comes with less baggage.

Take yer pick. Frankly I doubt if the choice matters much.

I personally use a Debian Wheezy/testing to run Virtualbox as a dedicated host accross several servers for production environments, and it never let me down.

Why Linux :
1. very small OS footprint, you actually keep your RAM for your VMs, unlike Windows 7 who directly suck up almost 1 GB RAM
2. very stable
3. CLI-based OS - just the best

Why Debian :
1. IMO the most stable Linux around actually made for servers (this could be argued with Red Hat but they just don't play in the same field so let's not)
2. Virtualbox first supported OS is Debian. Devs themselves use Debian so if anything works best, it's there
3. I just love it.

Over more than a year, I never ever had a crash of any kind, no VM corruption, no blocking major issues.

Thanks.

Memory is one of my primary concerns, I am aware that windows not only seems to use a lot of ram to do nothing, and I'm sure the longer I leave them running the more it will loose and require reboots.

I have not tried Debian yet, I think I will give it a go next thanks, I did expect Linux to be more work to set-up VirtualBox on, but it took me only a little bit longer than windows.

DavidMansfield81 wrote:I am aware that windows not only seems to use a lot of ram to do nothing, and I'm sure the longer I leave them running the more it will loose and require reboots.

I don't know of any case where Windows caused problems like that. I am aware of third party applications (antivirus and GoogleChromeUpdater) where that happens. Ignorance abounds, don't accept gossip as fact.

DavidMansfield81 wrote:Memory is one of my primary concerns, I am aware that windows not only seems to use a lot of ram to do nothing, and I'm sure the longer I leave them running the more it will loose and require reboots.

You missunderstood me : Windows has a valid reason for using RAM the way it does (very nice display, memory caching, improving user experience), it is simply not fitting with the use of a dedicated host.

Ah come on. Both have issues with memory just in different areas.

Now to address the Windows VS. Linux, it really boils down to what you can deal with. If you are an experienced Linux user, VirtualBox does actually perform better in Linux and has fewer overall issues.

The foot print for the most part is smaller using Linux than Windows if you can deal with the command line. If you add the graphics this gets closer to being the same in most regards.

Oh and I take exception about the part of Linux being built by hobbyists. These people are professionals that just happen to work at various companies instead of all at one big brick location.

Perryg wrote:Oh and I take exception about the part of Linux being built by hobbyists.

I told you it was a good troll...

ps. I'm a professional too, but when I'm working on VirtualBox stuff I'm a hobbyist. It's a matter of attitude, risk, reward - not competence.

Anyway, 'nuff said I think. Point it, there is no substantial reason I can see to prefer one over the other in all scenarios. It's largely a matter of personal taste.

noteirak wrote:...Why Linux: very small OS footprint ... very stable ... Virtualbox first supported OS is Debian. Devs themselves use Debian...

Well, these look like facts more than opinions or personal tastes.
Which, I think, is exactly what David was asking for, maybe with no "trolly" intention at all.

Surely the final choice almost always depends on personal taste (or preconception, misinformation...), but if you think technical and you have to build up a system where the host OS is only intended to provide a solid, performing and... "invisible" background to many VMs (which will actually have the focus), you obviously come to that natural question:
which host OS may prove best for such a task?

I don't think that you will find someone here who knows all the relevant hosts OS well enough to be able to answer this "easy" question.

As for me, when I ask a technical question in a technical forum I do not expect to get absolute answers from someone knowing everything about the issue; that would be asking for too much! :]
I feel lucky and satisfied when I find people who have some more knowledge or experience than I do and are kind enough to share that with me. Which does not happen very often, actually.

I maybe wrong, but in this particular case I'm not sure a useful answer can come only from someone who deeply knows all relevant OS; maybe some knowledge of VirtualBox's source code and history can be enough to provide some good advice which can help taking a weighted decision. Just like we have seen in this thread.

Thanks for all the reply's.

I have been running tests on both Linux and windows now and i can say that windows was defiantly easier to setup (but then I am a every day windows user) however when setup and the hosts left idle running the winXP clients in headless mode, those that were running on Linux(Ubuntu) were smoother for the end users and the linux host OS didn't crash once, the windows7 computer had to be restarted a couple of times either due to people saying random clients were running slow or the remote display not connecting.

Conclusion, much as I prefer to use Windows7 for everything I think in this case i can save the money and use linux as there seems to be no benefit to using windows for this purpose.

I am now going to do the same test again but on Debian as suggested by noteirak and see if i find any problems or differences between running it on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a fork of Debian, but with all the user-friendly "fat" around.
So if you are happy with Ubuntu, you'll have the same pleasure under Debian, simply much more spartian.

And if you are confortable with command lines, I would go for the very basic install with no GUI whatsoever. Then you'll be using a whooping 66 MB memort footprint for the OS

If you're not going to be using the host machine for anything other than VMs and perhaps web browsing and some productivity work with the included LibreOffice, I'd say definitely go with Linux. I use Ubuntu for my primary OS. In fact, today, I did a clean reinstall (recommended because the 12.04 LTS version seems to work better with VirtualBox than the non-LTS releases [12.10]). I'd estimate it took an hour tops to install the OS, install Ubuntu updates, install VirtualBox, and start installing the VM. I work in IT and I know that it takes hours to get the OS, drivers, acceptable browsers (not IE) and related plugins, and several rounds of updates installed. The best part about Ubuntu -- no drivers to install! And Firefox is included. Just install the OS and you're off (after installing VirtualBox).

I have no idea how much faster a Windows 7 computer would be going from 32-bit to 64-bit with the same configuration, but with my i3-350M and 3 GB of RAM, going from 32-bit Ubuntu to 64-bit Ubuntu made a huge difference in overall snappiness. I know you'll have to go 64-bit with "lots of RAM" anyway, but definitely do it regardless. It seems to boot faster and load web pages faster than Windows. However, unless I can do more tweaking, I can "only" run one VM at a time. I've used a quad-core Core 2 Duo Windows 7 host with 8 GB of RAM and it will easily run at least 2 VMs simultaneously.

However, if you'll be using the host OS for more things than hosting VMs and perhaps some Web browsing/productivity work using LibreOffice, perhaps it'd be better to stay with Windows. I find that with Ubuntu, if you can't download it in the Software Center, it's a PITA to get working. (VirtualBox does download as a file that opens with Software Center and it does install automatically so that's fine.) I'm using VirtualBox for Windows 7 strictly for Office, and hardware that must run on native Windows (although perhaps that won't be necessary now that I got USB working).

The only real issues I'm having (but I think I can find an answer to, which is the reason I joined here) with VirtualBox are that I can't get the bidirectional keyboard to work between Ubuntu host and Win7 guest, and I can't get a bridged connection working (NAT is fine). There's also a certain driver that must be reinstalled via terminal from time to time, I believe after certain Ubuntu updates.

One more thought -- although Windows Aero isn't as smooth as native installations and graphics in general aren't as good, for some odd reason, my hard drive gets a higher WEI rating in the VM than it does natively (granted, the VM is Win7 Pro 64 and the native in Win7 HP 32). It's a 5.9 natively, 6.6 in the VM. Going out on a limb here, I think this MIGHT be because the VDI is stored in my Ubuntu partition using its ext4 file system, so while Windows itself uses NTFS, the underlying file system is faster. I made this theory when an ISO file took half the time to copy to my Ubuntu partition than it did to the Windows one. Sound nuts? Call me out on it... I'd love to know why a VM thinks the same HDD is faster than a native installation does. Or is it normal for VirtualBox VMs to be faster with the disk regardless of OS?

I'm sorry for this long rant.... I know this is my first post and it might look like I'm trolling (it appears there are some trigger-happy troll catchers here) but my opinions are personal and legitimate! View my ranting as enforcing my recommendation to the OP.

DavidMansfield81 wrote:Hi,
I want to set-up a computer just to run multiple virtual machines, planning on a Intel i7 with lots of RAM.

But what operating system would be the best host, Linux or Windows?

Solaris is best for that. Unquestionably.

Solaris the only OS that will let you run multiple 64-bit VBox Guests concurrently with bridged networking, and ZFS is default.


/thread