[Novalug] Virtual Box or KVM

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Wed, 2010-12-22 at 23:27 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:

> Do either of you know if both VBox and KVM can be run
> at the same time?  I might use VBox for my "personal
> production" needs and tinker with KVM.  About a year
> ago I was tinkering with KVM and later, when I started
> VBox it could not because of conflicting kernel modules.

You can!

You can run virtual machines in KVM and VirtualBox simultaneously IF you
start a virtual machine in KVM first.

This is because KVM requires hardware support for virtualization to run
and once started KVM will "lock" access to the hardware virtualization
resources for itself.

VirtualBox wants but does not require hardware support so if KVM has it
locked VirtualBox will run without hardware support.

I have a Fedora Live CD running in KVM right now and a Windows XP vm
running in VirtualBox.

A modern day CPU with good hardware virtualization support (such as
current AMD Opteron or Phenom II or any Intel i3/i5/i7 chip) should be
significantly faster when running virtual machines with hardware support
in VirtualBox compared to running without.

So if you have the hardware support for it and can pick one and use it
with that, do so!

-- 
Maxwell Spangler
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