Virtualization Noob

[Emulex]

volume licensing is easy - i have both - but you need two people to get a competency to become certified. its not cheap in points at all man. iirc $1495 a year or something? tons of IUL/MSDN/TECHNET/TEST licenses.

but esx pwnz hyper-v all day long; especially if you have any perl/linux background - so much easier to control your datacenter using one or two vma4 systems.

 

[bob4432]

got a vm installed on my main rig - winxp32bit, 4GB, 15k scsi, 7.2ksata, 4850gpu. put the vm of win7 32bit w/ 2GB of ram and 2cores on the 7.2k hdd and got a 5.5 for the windows scoring which surprised me greatly. putting on the bfbc2 beta and also will put on company of heroes - which is more of a strategy game. i think company of heroes will probably work ok, but i don't think a fps like bfbc2 will works as there is a bit of latency and the os doesn't see the 4850, it sees a "vmware svga 3d driver" or something to that effect. kind of looking like what i will either need to make the gaming rig the actual host machine or run a host machine and put the other machines on top but then have a dedicated gaming rig....will let all know what kind of fps i get once the installation completes...

edit - installed bfbc2 - won't run, get a securom error even after disabling uac...now trying coh...

 

[Nothinman]

the os doesn't see the 4850, it sees a "vmware svga 3d driver" or something to that effect.

Yea, all of the hardware is emulated. Drivers assume they have complete control over the hardware they drive so you couldn't have more than one OS with direct access to the hardware.

 

[bob4432]

well, after further testing, i can get company of heroes to run, but the mouse pointer is gone and a portion of the graphics, like explosions become blocky and not a gradient. i turned down the resolution on the vm to 1280x800 and also watch my gpu via gpu-z and it does speed up to its 3d speed, but just doesn't work correctly. i am now trying some other software that just needs any type of hardware acceleration to see how it works - some cad/cam stuff

i also feel that any vm needs to be on 10k hdd or faster or a pretty dedicated 7.2k hdd - if moving data to the same hdd is on, very noticeable slow down in the vm. i will be putting the next vm on a 15k scsi drive and see how that works while running the vm and also moving files around - see if it gets beat up like the 7.2k hdd does.

does anybody think that any of my issues would be helped out by using xp as a vm over win7? fwiw, i can watch 720p x264 video on the vm, which i thought was pretty good and cpu useage ~20-30% or so.

it appears that if i wanted to use only 1 rig, the main rig would have to have to be basically a gaming rig w/ vmware, then the other vms could run the different servers/machines i use....not the ideal situation but would get me to 1 machine. since it is not a biz setup but home local, it may be an option, have to do a bit more testing. would probably have to end up w/ something like win7 64bit, 8GB ram and a quad. decisions, decisions as i still have to see how vmplayer compares to vmworkstation in terms of performance - if equal and minus features or if there is a performance hit..

again, thanks all for the info and any insight, please keep it coming
bob

 

[Modelworks]

Virtual box is more geared towards home users so you might want to try it if you want to run games in a VM.

Virtual box focuses more on gaming than VMware. http://www.virtualbox.org/
Some of the recent updates:

3D support: fixed crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online
3D support: fixed graphics corruption in World of Warcraft

The VirtualBox Guest Additions contain experimental hardware 3D support for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests.[12]

With this feature, if an application inside your virtual machine uses 3D features through the OpenGL or Direct3D 8/9 programming interfaces, instead of emulating them in software (which would be slow), VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's 3D hardware. This works for all supported host platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris), provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the first place.

The 3D acceleration currently has the following preconditions:

1.

It is only available for certain Windows, Linux and Solaris guests. In particular:
*

For Windows guests, support is restricted to 32-bit versions of XP and Vista. Both OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9 are supported (experimental).
*

OpenGL on Linux requires kernel 2.6.27 and higher as well as X.org server version 1.5 and higher. Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 have been tested and confirmed as working.
*

OpenGL on Solaris guests requires X.org server version 1.5 and higher.
2.

The Guest Additions must be installed.
For Direct 3D acceleration to work in a Windows Guest, VirtualBox needs to replace Windows system files in the virtual machine. As a result, the Guest Additions installation program offers Direct 3D acceleration as an option that must be explicitly enabled.


Technically, VirtualBox implements this by installing an additional hardware 3D driver inside your guest when the Guest Additions are installed. This driver acts as a hardware 3D driver and reports to the guest operating system that the (virtual) hardware is capable of 3D hardware acceleration. When an application in the guest then requests hardware acceleration through the OpenGL or Direct3D programming interfaces, these are sent to the host through a special communication tunnel implemented by VirtualBox, and then the host performs the requested 3D operation via the host's programming interfaces.

 

[bob4432]

Virtual box is more geared towards home users so you might want to try it if you want to run games in a VM.

Virtual box focuses more on gaming than VMware. http://www.virtualbox.org/
Some of the recent updates:

thx, will give it a try 🙂

 

[Spicedaddy]

My VM desktop:

http://pages.videotron.com/sugardad/desktop.jpg

 

[bob4432]

am trying virtual box now, and it is building it "hdd" so will see how it goes. i do want to get a mac os just to see what all the fuss is over....will have to ask one of my mac buddies to test it out.

if virtual box won't let me do as close to no emulated 3d hardware gaming i will go that route, if not will go vmplayer and just use win7 64bit as the main os and deal w/ any issues that may bring up using the main rig as the gaming rig, but will probably put in a q9400 and go to 8GB of ram - move hdds around and see how it goes 🙂 still need to get the networking down but i am sure a quick read on the vmware site will solve that for the different servers that need outside access.

this has been a great learning experience and i thank all of you for your input, it is greatly appreciated and has saved me a ton of time.

 

[bob4432]

installed virtual box - seems not to handle the ram near as well - w/ a vm w/ 1.5GB of ram and my normal xp machine sitting - 2.4GB used....but, will give it a try and see how it goes w/ gaming

 

[Nothinman]

i do want to get a mac os just to see what all the fuss is over....will have to ask one of my mac buddies to test it out.

Getting OS X installed in a VM is a bit of work and illegal because it's only designed and licensed to run on Apple hardware.

 

[bob4432]

Getting OS X installed in a VM is a bit of work and illegal because it's only designed and licensed to run on Apple hardware.

guess i won't do it then 😀

i sure do know how my wife's laptop is going - all vm and when there is too much b.s. in there from myspace/facebook/etc, just keep the file, reuse the initial snapshot and save me a ton of time fixing her browsing woes 🙂