Hi All,

I recently bought this Lenovo laptop with i7 and 8G RAM. I want to install a hypervisor and virtualise so that I could you multiple Linux distributions.

I have tried to read Xen and KVM documentation but am getting no where. Can anyone point me to a link / provide me some info step wise guide or something for full virtualization.

I also want to know if there are specific issues that may arise with the drivers or during the kernel compilation.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Mithun.

Hello and welcome.

Really the most easy way would be to use either the VMware's VMplayer or Oracle's Virtualbox. Both are free and very easy and safe ways to run multiple OS's at the same time. I may be assuming that you simply want to run OS's. Your system should be fully VM supported and would be a good choice for any Virtual Machine on any OS host.

Your system (Processor) has to be "Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x)" enabled.

Also, if it is "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)" enabled, you are on top of the world.

VT helps for virtualization but is (depending on the hypervisor) not a requirement - besides an i7 was mentioned, which as the VT technology ;-)

Also from my perspective, going with vmware player or workstation (not free) or Oracle's virtual box is the best / easiest bet for you.

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried the virtual box and the vmware but this time I want to learn to use the hypervisor technologies. I just stepped into Linux administration and am sure learning the KVMs and Xen will help me in my career. hence this enthusiasm for hypervisors.

they are all hypervisors, just on different levels ;-)
however, i'd not suggest digging into a level 1 hypervisor (e.g. esxi) on your laptop. Level 1 hypervisors will not give you any type of direct access to the virtual machines.
which is why there are level 2 hypervisors (or some which could be placed between level 1 and level 2).

KVM is as much a l1 hypervisor as ESX. The ability to control a VM on the same host where it runs has nothing to do with the hypervisor level.

true, i forgot a word.. "most" l1 hypervisors will not give you any type of direct access to the virtual machines.
personally i'd see that as an issue when wanting to fiddle with stuff on a laptop.

Also i did never mention kvm as any specific level ;-)
i'd assume 4 options to be quite good ideas to dig into: (kvm, virtual box, vmware player / server) - yet again i'd not opt for running esx or xen-server on the laptop. for that i'd try to get my hands on some dedicated hardware.

all true except for Xen - I used to run a xen kernel on my laptop, managing test VMs with libvirt with no problems at all, until I switched to KVM

You can use KVM Hypervisor with Ubuntu as host in which i7 supports intel VT-x which is required for KVM.

As Ubuntu will have the latest linux kernel i guess it supports most of the IO devices. Best to check for the Laptop vendor OEM website for the Linux drivers support.

If you are able to install Ubuntu without any driver issue then you can follow the link to Install KVM on Ubuntu.

If you need to learn Xen then you can use CentOS 5 which will support both Xen and KVM but i guess it will not have the drivers for you laptop as it has kernel version 2.6.18.

Regards
Rajiv