[wellylug] virtualisation options?

[Xav Paice]

> 
> I need to have a windows development environment around for the occasional piece of maintenance work from back when I developed on windows. My old windows box is limping along and can't keep it up much longer. 
> 

That's the reason so many people go with virtualisation now... 

> So I'm interested in setting up a virtual machine to stick XP on. I'm running Ubuntu on a 2 core laptop with only 1 Gig of ram. I'll probably need to increase that... 

yup 

> 
> In the past I used VMWare but was a bit unimpressed that I needed to semi-reinstall it whenever I updated my kernel. 

sudo vmware-config.pl - takes about 5 minutes all up. Well worth it in my opinion, but then I try to avoid kernel updates unless they're major. 

The other offerings out there will also make changes when the kernel is updated - Xen and kvm are both closely hooked into the kernel and Virtual Box uses a module. You just won't know what's going to break each time you use it. 

My fave is still VMWare Server - it's free, fast enough, just works, and all the devices I need work properly, plus I can re-use VM's I made ages ago without pain. The others all have limitations - ymmv. 

Given you want to run Windows and for development performance is an issue, you will need to use something that doesn't rely on paravirtualisation for any i/o performance - that cuts out Xen as although you are able to do hardware virtualisation it's not that quick. KVM is also not the greatest, and I had endless issues with changing the CD (should be easy?) meaning I gave up as I had some real work to do. I haven't tried Virtual Box in earnest yet but it seems like it's worth a better look. 
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