We have been virtualizing machines, servers and workstations, for over a
decade. First on Debian, then Devuan.

My personal workstation is Devuan, and I have Windows 7 & 10, FreeBSD,
Devuan, and CentOS available as virtuals that I spool up as needed.

On our servers, we mainly virtualize Devuan servers;
dbs/web/mail/nextcloud/jitsi and even one database server (MySQL +
Postgres). We also have several Windows Server (2008r2, 2016 and 2019)
in production as virtuals.

Xen is historically good, but I've been having issues with it over the
past few years. The Windows PV drivers are not as available as they have
been in the past, and there have been some other issues. I tried some
other tools, notably Oracle Virtualbox, and they run fine, but I decided
I would not tie myself to them.

Instead, we are slowly moving to KVM, and actually are using libvirt
(from Redhat) to manage them. I have never been a big RedHat fan, but
they did good on this. It is a front end to Xen, KVM and maybe other
hypervisors, but you use a consistent set of commands to do things. It
also has a GUI if you want. I use it on my workstation, but we don't
install GUI's on our servers, so those are done via the cli. I think
there may even be a WebUI for it, but not sure.

One of the main reasons for going with KVM is the availability of PV
drivers for Windows. The difference between full virtualization and the
use of PV drivers is huge. About a 5-10 speedup (my personal guess).

Since we manage OS X machines also, I've thought about looking at the
legality of creating an OS X virtual. I understand it is fairly well
documented.

My notes on this are at kb.unixservertech.com. NOTE: these are my notes,
and as it says on the cover, if it makes your computer fall into a black
hole, it is not my fault. But, I try to put reference links at the
bottom of everything, so it may give you a start. It is notes, not
howto's or anything.

You can feel free to contact me off list if you decide to go this route
and need anything.

Rod

On 8/1/21 7:18 PM, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
> I’ve been running a production system first on ascii, but upgraded to beowulf. the only trouble I’ve had has been hardware and that was just a failed power supply. i run the whole thing on kvm/libvirt. runs great. uptimes in the 100’s of days.
>
> Your mileage may vary.
>
> —Curtis
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Aug 1, 2021, at 7:45 PM, yamifag@??? wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I want to install a bare metal hypervisor in my computer to get the benefits from dual booting except without the mess that is dual booting.
>>
>> I'm going to use it for both linux and windows systems and all I want is for the vms and their files to be isolated, control over their resources, PCI passthrough, and good performance. I don't care for a GUI as long as scripts are an option.
>>
>> Currently I'm between Xen and Qemu, but I'm open to other options.
>> Which would be the best option in this case, and is this even a good idea?
>>
>> Thanks.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dng mailing list
>> Dng@???
>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> _______________________________________________
> Dng mailing list
> Dng@???
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
>

--
Rod Rodolico
Daily Data, Inc.
POB 140465
Dallas TX 75214-0465 US
http://dailydata.net
214.827.2170