Hi.

I want to run multiple Windows VMs using Sun xVM VirtualBox on a Solaris 10 u5 server. The Windows instances use some TCP and UDP ports that I cannot change and in some cases they are the same for multiple instances of the VMs. The first thing I thought was running each VM in a separate zone with shared or exclusive IP but unfortunately I had a problem (I posted here in LQ and in VirtualBox forums but got no answer) which prevents me to use this approach and left me with the doubt if running VB in a Solaris 10 zone is even possible (official documentation says it is).

I suspect the only option I'm left with would be using network virtualization with crossbow but I have no hope of seeing a solaris 10 update with a crossbow backport soon and cannot use OpenSolaris for this task.

Do you guys think I'm missing some other option to accomplish this goal?

Thank you for the help,
Enrico.

Check this:
http://blogs.sun.com/jsavit/entry/zo..._livecd_inside

If you want to run everal instances of Windows as servers then xVM (Xen) would be a better idea IMHO.

I must confess that I'm a bit lost in the middle of all the information I find about the Sun xVM technology. I mean: VB is an hypervisor, the soon-to-be-released Sun xVM Server is an(other?) hypervisor (based on Xen I think). The question about Xen is: I know the OpenSolaris Xen project but it seems not to have been integrated into Solaris 10 yet, isn't it?

I did not checked that, check solaris.com maybe.

I have no clue. But ive heard that VB is only able to run one VM at a time. Therefore you want to run VB in multi zones, yes?

@vermaden: I've been checking and indeed it seems that the soon-to-be-shipped Sun xVM Server is what I was waiting for for Solaris 10.

@kebabbert:
Yes and not only. Running multiple instances of VB in multiple zones would allow me to solve the problem of the TCP ports. Every VM instance in a zone would have its IP and its ports: two instances of VB running a Windows guest each using, for example, ports 137 to 139, could run without problems and even if every VB would NAT, from the outside there would no problem. Without crossbow and running VMs in the global zone I found no way to solve this problem.

The documentation I read about Xen@OpenSolaris and Sun xVM Server promises to solve this problem. Luckily I'll just wait a couple of months because switching to SXCE or OpenSolaris is not an option here.

Bye,
Enrico