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Hi folks. I've got a new computer on the way, and I want to set it up with either Solaris and/or Linux for development, and Windows for business apps like Outlook, Cisco Telepresence, WebEx, and others.

Presumably Windows could be either the host or the guest. What are the criteria one should use to make this decision? Here are some things I have been thinking about, but I would appreciate hearing from those with more experience in the matter.

Programs like Cisco Telepresence and WebEx are pretty network-intensive and video-intensive, and I wonder whether it would be more efficient to have that kind of thing running on the host OS.

On the other hand, it seems like it would be more secure to make Windows the guest.

Also, whichever OS needs to be rebooted more frequently (e.g. because of updates) would be less of a pain as a guest. That would clearly have been Windows through Windows 7, but I read that Windows 8 (8.1 is what I will have) is better about that. I don't really know whether this matters anymore.

I won't be doing any gaming, and in fact I'll just use the HD4600 graphics on the Haswell Core i7 rather than a separate card. I'll have lots of RAM -- 16GB.

Ideally I think I would run Solaris as the host OS so that I could create a big ZFS filesystem that I could share over NFS to Windows and Linux guests. I don't yet know whether Solaris will run on this hardware (a Toshiba S75 laptop), but if it does I thought that would give me the best foundation. But am I thinking about the right things here?

Oh, and if I only have an OEM license for Windows (it comes installed on the laptop), will it even run as the guest OS? How would I set that up?

Thanks for any advice!

I run several VMs on a Solaris host and am somewhat partial to Solaris for hosting. Some things to consider include:
1. If the applications need access to resources which do not easily translate from guest to host, such as video, 3D, USB and video cameras, then it is better to have those applications run on the host and let that dictate your decision.
2. Generally it is better to have a more server-like operating system as the host because it can better manage resources used by multiple guests. Solaris does an amazing job with disks virtualization (ZFS), network virtualization (Crossbow) and CPU scheduling. All of those translate well to hosting guests.
3. As you noted, the more likely an OS instance needs to be rebooted, the better off it is as a guest.

For what it's worth, I routinely run Webex for work deep in the virtualization chain and it generally works. To give you an idea of how deep, I host Webex sessions on an XP machine in a closet somewhere that I RDP into from a Citrix session, getting into the Citrix session through a VPN from a virtual XP instance running on a Solaris server with the display sent to Sun Ray thin clients. The hops from Webex to my eyeballs includes the XP machine in a closet, a Citrix instance with RDP client, a VPN, a Citrix client, a virtual XP instance, Sun Ray server and a Sun Ray client.

As you mentioned more RAM is good. I cannot answer about the licensing issues.

Good luck and let us know what you decide.

Thanks, Marty -- that helps.

Darned Cisco Telepresence, though -- only Windows and Mac are supported. I wonder how well it would work in a VM...

AmigoNico wrote:Thanks, Marty -- that helps.

Darned Cisco Telepresence, though -- only Windows and Mac are supported. I wonder how well it would work in a VM...

Try it and see. You might be surprised. Then again, maybe not. Once you find out, please let the community know what you learn.