Virtual Machines

silverferro

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Nov 28, 2004
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Is the virtual machine capabilities build into new processors work with current windows xp 32/62 versions or have to wait for vista? Are they gonna be OS depandable at all?
 

spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
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If you're asking what platform you can run the now free Virtual PC and VMWare engines on the answer is all of the above.
 

silverferro

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Nov 28, 2004
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No I'm not talking about the software virtual machines like "Virtual PC" by Microsoft and VMWare. I'm asking about the virtual Machine capability built into Intell CORE2 and AM2 socket AMD processors them self.

Take a look at Intell website and the flash movie on core technology. This capability is highlighted.And its not using a seperate virtual machine software, rather this capability is built into the processors. I just want to know if windows xp can use this capability so I can have multiple versions of winXP for different needs when I get the core2 or do I have to buy a copy of vista :(
 

Rilex

Senior member
Sep 18, 2005
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This relies on software to drive it, not the OS necessarily. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 provides support for Intel's VT. Beta 2 will provide support for AMDs.
 

jlbenedict

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Jul 10, 2005
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Originally posted by: Rilex
This relies on software to drive it, not the OS necessarily. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 provides support for Intel's VT. Beta 2 will provide support for AMDs.


In addition to this, the enterprise level Vmware's ESX Server, I believe supports this as well.
 

n0cmonkey

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Jun 10, 2001
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It should work with most OSes, although they may need software like Xen to take advantage of it.
 

silverferro

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Nov 28, 2004
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Wait do I have to install VMWare or some similar software then install the OSs ? But to install VMWare I already need a host OS to be installed 1st. So whats the diff from how VM are run presently? I was thinking of something like some kind of VM mechanism which allows to install OSs witout having a host OS 1st. Something like OSs running side by side individually after booting the system. I was asking for too much I guess hahahaha
 

Lord Banshee

Golden Member
Sep 8, 2004
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Thats what it sounded like when they first started talking about all this VM Tech built into the CPU... But now that it is out, you hear nothing about it so i am guess it will not be much of anything... :(
 

drag

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Jul 4, 2002
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To use the virtualization stuff built into the hardware you need a hypervisor to manage all of it.

Vmware produces hypervisor for some of it's products. Xen is a Free software hypervisor that has the support of Intel and AMD among othe industry leaders.

Microsoft doesn't have a hypervisor yet. Although they probably will have one optionally with their 'Longhorn Server' edition.

Otherwise you can run a virtual machine as a application. Vmware workstation and Microsoft virtual server all do things like that. These are things that just run as a application inside the host operating system. Aren't hypervisors so much.

As far as what OS to use.. Vmware ESX stuff should do it. It's widely used in enterprise right now and has some very good management tools. But my Bet is on Xen/Linux.(because it's Free software and it's no-cost) Linux kernel will eventually have facilities combined with newer PCI card specifications that will allow client operating systems direct access to the hardware. Right now it has limited things to allow file system access and such. Not sure of the details, but is one of the reasons why Xen/Linux (and Vmware stuff on Linux) is fast at virtuliation.

It'll take a few more years before you get all new hardware using new PCI specifications to allow more direct hardware access.. (so you can run your games in Windows with 3d acceleration while your main system uses OS X or Linux, for example). Again I don't know all the details.

Right now it's good for running normal applications and server stuff. (For example say you wanted to run Ubuntu all the time, but still be able to access Windows stuff for running Microsoft Office or Dreamweaver or whatnot.. You would run Ubuntu on top of Xen then run Windows in a unprivilaged level and access windows desktop via rdesktop for those applications. It would run at near hardware speeds. Within 90-95% of native hardware)
 

silverferro

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Nov 28, 2004
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In that case...need a lot of ram and a super fast harddisk to run the host OS and multiple virtual OSs on top of it and programes running inside each virtual OS. Have hardware reached that fast enough at this point of time....Maybe not until NAND drives arrive at affordable prices. I belive harddisks are the slowest performing part of present PCs(unless spending thousands on solid state hard drives or running raids). Its the weakest link to a fast overall performance.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Ya.. If you wantted to be serious about it it would probably be a good idea to give each system it's own harddrive or something like that.

Performance on a single harddrive or a small raid system isn't a big deal. Personally I ran several Debian servers in a Xen environment and it wasn't a issue. On a PC the majority of the time the system is idle, even one that people would normally consider busy. Each OS gets it's on time to do what it wants and it's not a problem.

Now if all the systems were busy servers with contant disk activity then that would be a different story.

So it's not usually a problem and cost to running mulitple operating systems is not so much that it makes the machine unusable or anything like that.
 

Blazkowicz

Member
Jun 27, 2006
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As far as core duo is concerned hardware level virtualization though supported is disabled by default. It will probably be enabled in the future through a BIOS update.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Depends on the motherboard. I have a Intel Pentium-D 930 dual core CPU on a Asus motherboard with i945g chipset. I have VT aviable and enabled in the bios, but I haven't played around with it. Most motherboards aviable now don't seem to have it setup to use VT yet. Or so it seems. I specificly bought this computer because of the VT extensions.


http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/IntelVT