On 17 January 2017 at 12:01, ProPAAS DBA <dba@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All;
I'm running Fedora 25 on a laptop with 16GB of ram. I'm frustrated with the VMware workstation reliably breaking every 2 to 3 kernel updates and sometimes with no reasonable fix in sight for some time. Not the end of the world and I get the reasons behind it, however I wonder if KVM might be a better plan. I used KVM many years ago and it was not quite as reliable & easy to work with as I needed. I assume it's gotten better?
What VM's do you need, e.g., do you need to run Windows or just linux VM's? Is there are reason to rule out VirtualBox and lightweight tools (LXC -- Docker, LXD, etc)?
Questions:
- does anyone have experiences good and bad with KVM? Any gotcha's or common issues I should be aware of?
I've had good experiences, but roghly 5 years ago) using VMware VM's to provide linux in a Wiindows-based teaching lab. The same VM's can be run on a Linux or MacOS host to prepare teaching material. KVM at the time was considerably slower than VMware.
- Anyone have experience with both KVM and VMware? opinions on which is better, more stable, etc?
I switched to VirtualBox after trying VMware and KVM, and then from VB to LXC, but I'm no longer running workshops, just software testing across multiple linux platforms. Disk space requirements of VM's gives LXC a huge advantage.
- Is is easy / possible to convert a VMware workstation VM to a KVM?
Looked at this once, but had some issues with the device drivers (VM was using a disk controller that KVM didn't support).
- With VMware I get the vmnet network and I don't have to do anything other than select nat, bridged, etc to get networking in place for a VM, even if I want to access te VM directly from another machine (i.e. not the local only network). Is this true with KVM as well?
- If I decide later to remove it does it remove cleanly? I dislike the vmnet & other bits VMware leaves around even after an uninstall
You might find it better to host VM's on a minimal install of a stable distro (CentOS 7) and run
unstable OS's (e.g., Fedora) in VM's or containers.
George N. White III <aa056@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
_______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
