VirtualBox Server (Which Distro)?
 

I have a server we purchased which will be used to host several virtual machines. The server has 12 cores & 64GB of DDR2 RAM. The hardware is optimised specifically for a virtual farm but my question is what should I look for when selecting a host OS for the server? Is there a specific distribution that was an optimal kernel designed for virtualization? The virtual boxes I believe are going to be a mix of 32 & 64 bit clients however I do want the host server to run a 64 bit version of Linux not to mention the memory it's going to need to process...

Thanks for any info and or recommendations!

VirtualBox plays quite nicely with several of the more popular linux distros. My personal experience with Ubuntu and Debian is quite satisfactory. I prefer Debian Stable for a server OS. Thats just my opinion, FWIW.

TuxSurfer

I have used RHEL with Virtual Box and found that it works extremely well. Plus you get support from Red Hat. The downside is its not free.

I know that 32 bit processors only support 4 GB of RAM, I'm not sure but you may want to make sure that a 32 bit OS will let you see more than the first 4 GB of RAM in the system.

As far as a suggestion, I am quite pleased with Ubuntu. It's always been good to me and the software repos are updated regularly, and system patches are pushed on a regular basis as well. I also like the fact that their philosophy is that their OS will always be free, whereas some of the larger distro companies have started charging for full versions of their OS. I've tried Fedora and although it is good, sometimes they were "really" slow on updating their repos. I remember at one time I looked and the version of Firefox in the repos was something like 3 versions behind the current version. I've had Ubuntu Server running on my meager old-school busted laptop hosting a shared printer, a shared drive, a website and running Folding@Home in the background for about 3 weeks now without having to restart.

I had an issue with VirtualBox occasionally (up to ~50% of time, variable) presenting the shutdown dialog when a virtual machine was started using VirtualBox 3.0.6 on ubuntu 8.04. The issue "went away" using the same VirtualBox, virtual machine definitions and .vdi files on Slackware 13.0.

To me, a server specifically running VirtualBox needs OpenSolaris...

Would you care to elaborate?

Simply, they're both Sun Microsystems products.

Ok, I thought you had more than that, but, I agree their products should work well together. I have no experience with OpenSolaris so I personally can't comment on the OS especially its use as a server.

I did a little 'review' of OpenSolaris a while ago. I'm familiar with Solaris, as we use it at work so if OpenSolaris is anywhere near as stable it'd make a cracking server OS. Definitely one for consideration imho.