Is Server Virtualization Possible with Older Hardware?
 

Virtualization Noob.. Spent the day reading older VM Server Posts without answering
Will PIII 600e,PC 100-133, Max Ram is 640, ATA66, network cards, support a headless virtual server host configuration of minimal 32bit slackware install?
Hope some virtual software variants may work with CPUs that have no VT built-in.
VM states CPUs 400Mhz & better. Hyper-V for MS Apps requires 1Gb of ram or better plus Intel VT support.

Will KVM, Virtualbox, or QEMU work with I686 hardware? The old box is rock solid don't want abandon it. Thank you.

I have previously used qemu on very similar hardware. Its not blindingly fast, but if you guest os does not have big needs, you should be able to get something going.

Qemu itself had quite cryptic requirments for getting unusual disk and network setups running, but for a basic testing system you should be good.

There were some hacks for running openbox as a headless service, but it did not seem to be targeted that way. I never got it running on the older hw.

If your host is running linux, you should definitely look at virt-manager for config and management.

Originally all virtual machine applications ran without hardware support. Bochs VirtualPC VMware and later QEMU and Virtualbox all ran on that sort of hardware. All of them pretty slow. The later VirtualPC/VMware and Virtualbox went back and forth if they'd run later versions on non-supported hardware. There should be versions available still to be used. One could run Windows 95 and some version of dos pretty quickly.

The only good part of running QEMU may be that it doesn't limit you to real ram. You could use more ram by using swap/page file area.


I don't really get why you'd want to run both a host OS on it and a client OS though. It is barely enough to run a single OS.

Jefro, Does this make sense host is just minimal slackware, the server would be the host, guest would be dedicated services? Not to run guest OS.

Sorry, I am still confused. Please try to explain more.


"host is ... slackware, ...server... host, guest... dedicated services? Not ...run guest ..."

This is what I see on your question. Sorry, it still confuses me when you ask about a VM.

If what I see is what you mean then OK, that old box can run some minimal linux as a headless server for server duty.

As to the VM part I don't get it. A VM almost has to have a client OS to be of any use. Some business computer are different. Some types of OS can use things like jails and containers but that is not what you mean.


There is nothing to be gained by using a VM on that system other than to test or play with. It is very limited on resources.