I would like to make use of virtualization. I have 2 computers, one of the computers has a Core I7. I would like to run 4 virtual machines on the Core I7 computer where each one makes use of 1 core and 2 GB ram for a total of 4 cores and 8 GB.

I have never set something like that up and I have a couple of important questions. On the Core I7 computer that I will be running the virtual machines on. What linux distro would be best suited to manage it. Also, what (only free) virtualization software should I use. More important, does it make sense, that I make sure all 4 virtual machines are 32 bit?

Another question, which I don't know how to google is this. How can I connect to that computer and use my virtual machine from the connected computer. I believe webhosts do this? You set up a virtual server for your webhosting and in a small monitor, you can watch your virtual machine boot? I would really like to know what software I need for this and how I can set it up.

As a side note - the reason for 4 virtual machines is to practice networking including setting up file servers and apache servers and databases. For management and for user access.

Thank you.

Welcome to LQ!!!

When you configure virtualization you can force a system to use 1 dedicated CPU for 1 virtual machine that is called CPU pinning but what you want to do that? You can configure each machine with one CPU and let the system hypervisor take care of CPU cycles on the basis of requirement. CPU pinning is important when you are quite sure that it will definitely make optimum utilization of 1 CPU.

By theory you can even assign 4 CPUs to all 4 virtual machine (though I wouldn't suggest that) and hypervisor will take care of CPU cycles to be assigned to VM.

When it comes to memory you can assign 2 GB to each of them but I would suggest going with 1.5 as you said you will be using for testing purpose I doubt you will need more than that. Incase you need you can increase as per your requirement. Leave some breathing space for base machine otherwise it will be quite slow.

You can go with CentOS with KVM, I have used virtualbox long back like 3 years ago and at that time wasn't impressed with the performance. Virtual box could be used but I cannot comment on that as I haven't used it lately. So for me CentOS + KVM works. That also answers your question regarding virtualization software that is you can go with either KVM or Virtualbox.

You can run 64 bit machines as you have got i7 processor. I am running 64 bit machines on my CentOS + KVM setup and those machines works pretty well.

You can go with NAT or bridged configuration. You have to make sure that you have DHCP running in your setup for virtual machines to get IP incase you don't want to assign IPs manually else you can go with Bridge or NAT with static IPs on all machines. In this way you will be able to connect to any machine in your network with any other machine on your network.

Should work!

Virtual machines and physical hardware has improved a lot. You can assign all cores to every client and in some VM's you can over assign ram. The VM manages resources to you won't have to limit your builds as much.

There are a number of virtual machines so you'd have to play with a few. None of them are newbie proof so you will have to bone up a bit on how they work.

The host os is only your preference mostly. Generally the top 10 at distrowatch.com could be used but many many more work great too. Just what you like best as long as it is a newish distro.

You can get many pre-built OS's made in a vm form already too. Some have software installed for your learning too. Lamp and such are common builds.

I think it may be worth doing this in a couple of stages. There is no doubt that getting started with Virtualbox is easiest and is a good way to teach you the basics. You may want to leave 1GB free for your host machine though as VB takes a bit of extra memory for the slick UI. You can turn this off to save resources later or you can move onto another Virtualization platform if you prefer.

As you say you want to practice, again this leans me towards recommending VB to start with. U learned how to set up networks using VB and an i7 with 16GB of RAM and learned a lot that way. I actually started with Windows as the host, but was delighted that my Linux machine and VB could open the same VMs (and perform way faster!).