VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘virtualbox’

I happened to find the Paragon Go Virtual free P2V migration tool when trying to find a disk image back up tool for my notebook. This free tool is designed for desktops only and only works with the following OSes:

• Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
• Windows Vista (32/64-bit)
• Windows XP (32/64-bit)
• Windows 2000 Professional

Here are some self described key features per the web site:

“Full Windows OS Support - Guaranteed support for any Windows operating system since Win2K (excluding server editions).

P2V Migration - Migrate a physical system to a virtual environment by converting all installed software and data into a virtual disk of the required virtual machine.

Migration without rebooting Windows - Hot processing of locked (in-use) hard disks lets you migrate a computer without rebooting and interrupting Windows.

P2V Adjust OS to recover the startup ability after unsuccessful virtualization with a 3rd party tool and to make Windows Vista/7 backups bootable on virtual hardware.

Smart Driver Injector - Makes the process of adding new drivers smooth and easy.

Performance – Paragon Go Virtual performs approximately 20% faster (your results may vary).

P2V adjust OS – Freeware tools will not adjust the OS to virtual hardware, leaving the user unable to boot their virtual machine. Go Virtual adjusts the OS so the virtual machine will boot successfully.

Selection of virtual hardware – Go Virtual offers the user a selection of virtual hardware types. Freeware tools typically do not.

Migration of offline systems - Freeware tools support the migration of operating systems currently running, but they have problems migrating offline operating systems, especially when there are more than one OS on the disk. Go Virtual performs these operations with ease.”

Also per the Paragon web site:

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Although VIRTUMANIA 18 has been out via the RSS feed for over a week, I am just finally posting about it! Sorry for the delay but I’ve been on vacation. So, if you do not already subscribe to the show via iTunes or Podbean please add us to your favorite media player or feed reader. You can even catch Virtumania as soon as it comes out on the Mobile Site.

In this episode Rick Vanover joins me again as co-host, and Jason Perlow from ZDNet is our special guest. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 18 – Putting The Mustard On Free Virtualization Charcuterie. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC  and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com host popular technology and foodie blogger Jason Perlow (@jperlow) of Tech Broiler and Off The Broiler. In this episode we explore and compare several free virtualization solutions available today. Like selecting cuts of meat from a butcher, there is always plenty of choices. Consider this episode a delicious virtualization Charcuterie. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 18:

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I am proud to announce a new podcast I will be hosting on a weekly basis – VIRTUMANIA!

VIRTUMANIA is an Infosmack Production that will try to focus on the operational and administrative viewpoints of all things virtualization, so expect a different guest list of bloggers, architects, administrators, and consultants with each recording.

VIRTUMANIA episodes will be announced as new posts here on VM /ETC. Be sure to subscribe to the VM /ETC RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader or download the show each week from the podcast’s RSS feed. Of course, you can subscribe to the VIRTUMANIA podcast on iTunes. Finally, download or listen to each episode from the embedded player on the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the first episode of VIRTUMANIA!

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 1 – Virtualbox, Type 2 Hypervisors, and Security Nipples.

Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com with guests Sean Clark (@vseanclark) of SeanClark.us and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com. This week’s episode includes discussion about Sun Virtulabox, Teleportation, comparing all type 2 hypervisors, and Oracle’s master virtualization plan. Thanks to Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production.

Listen Now:

Download

I can’t thank Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley enough for the patience, advice, and support necessary to get this podcast off the ground. For those that don’t already know, Greg and Marc host the already widely popular Infosmack podcast covering servers, storage, and virtualization news. Tapping into their insights and experiences while planning this podcast have been, and will continue to be invaluable to me. Special thanks to Marc for the Virtumania theme music and Greg for recording and post editing each episode.

I created a Windows 7 virtual machine in VMware Player, ran it for a while on my Windows notebook, and then decided to move it to one of my Ubuntu machines and host it in VirtualBox. I had no problem copying the folder and files between the different host based hypervisors. VirtualBox can use a virtual disk in the VMware .vmdk format so it was just a matter of file transfers between computers. VirtualBox has it’s own Guest Editions (or host tools) to add functionality and improve performance, so I needed to make that switch inside the VM too. My problem was that I did not remove the VMware Tools before I moved the VM.

When I went to uninstall VMware Tools after powering the VM on Ubuntu and in VirtualBox I received a message that “no VMware Products were detected”. Luckily, I quickly figured out I wasn’t the first to attempt this move and experience this hurdle. The post Uninstalling VMware tools when not running on a VMware host tells the same tale and provides the answer.

“I added the VMware Tools ISO to that VM and opened a command prompt. Then I found the “setup.exe” or “setup64.exe” files on the cd. Run those in the cmd window with a /c switch. (example:  ”setup64.exe /c” )  This will remove the Tools.  I installed the VirtualBox additions and then reboot.  On my Windows 2008 server it crashed on first reboot, then then I tried again and it loaded up just fine.  Network works and everything! Yay!”

On my Windows host with VMware Player installed (VMware Workstation has a similar location) the windows.iso file was found at C:\program files(x86)\VMware\VMware Player\windows.iso. Your path needs to be adjusted based on whether you have a 32 bit or 64 bit OS obviously. Mine was a 64 bit host even though the directory was at c:\program files(x86), by the way.

I’ll let you figure out your preferred method on how to copy the windows.iso file to the Ubuntu host, but once you do you can:

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I’ve spent too much time the last few weeks figuring out how to enable Direct3D hardware pass through in VirtualBox version 3.0.2, and then testing how well some of my games work in a virtual machine (VM). Check the end of this post for a 3 minute video I put together showing some of my results. The video is a sequence of desktop captures. What you are watching is my entire Ubuntu Jaunty desktop with the VirtualBox console open in the center. The games are being played full screen inside the VirtualBox VM. I did not record the actual game sound because I could not figure out how to do it with gtk-recordmydesktop (kept getting an error when sound capture was enabled). So, I created a my own mix of several popular songs for the video sound track instead.

Long story short, the only acceptable configuration I was able to achieve was on a 32 bit Ubuntu Jaunty host with a 32 bit Windows XP guest. My Ubuntu host does not even have virtualization assist technology in the processor – go figure! I first tried 32 bit Vista and Windows 7 RC VMs on a 64 bit Ubuntu host with Intel VT, but had no luck. [side note: Windows 7 is not advertised as supported for VirtualBox Direct3d yet anyways]

I had read a lot of forum threads and blog posts recently about how disappointed those who have tried already were, but, after the first couple of attempts I am quite pleased with my game(s) performance in a Windows XP VM. Not all of my games worked for various different reasons, but with a little research and some tweaks for everything from video performance to compatibility mode settings I got a handful of them to run. On the games that did not work, I left them installed. I’ll use VirtualBox’s OVF export feature to move this VM between different operating systems and PC hardware in the future hopefully for different results.

My Youtube video is embedded at the end of this post, but first here are some notes on my setup and about my efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a quick post to let readers know that VirtualBox announced on April 8 that version 2.2.0 was released. From the VirtualBox web site:

“Sun today released VirtualBox 2.2.0 which marks another major milestone for the world’s most popular free and open source hypervisor. Among the many improvements are support for OVF appliances, 3D acceleration for Linux/Solaris guests and support for up to 16GB of RAM per virtual machine. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.1.”

New features listed in the Changelog:

VirtualBox 2.2.0 (released 2009-04-08)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export (see chapter 3.8, Importing and exporting virtual machines, User Manual page 55)
• Host-only networking mode (see chapter 6.7, Host-only networking, User Manual page 88)
• Hypervisor optimizations with signi?cant performance gains for high context switching rates
• Raised the memory limit for VMs on 64-bit hosts to 16GB
• VT-x/AMD-V are enabled by default for newly created virtual machines
• USB (OHCI & EHCI) is enabled by default for newly created virtual machines (Qt GUI only)
• Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts
• Shared folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests
• OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests (see chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), User Manual page 70)
• Added C API in addition to C++, Java, Python and Web Services

I have upgraded my installations and plan to test the OVF import and export features soon. I will post again when I do.

March Madness in VirtualBox

Once again I am using a VirtualBox VM to help me watch a streaming sporting event on a Linux host. This past football season I was Watching the Georgia Bulldogs in a Virtualbox VM running on Ubuntu, and this time I am able to watch the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament from a Windows 7 Beta VM hosted on Kubuntu. Similar to my scenario before, Firefox is an unsupported browser for the streaming game broadcasts available from cbssportsline.com. I needed IE so I started up my Windows VM and started watching the games.

Here’s some quick details about my setup.

• Host OS is Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.1.4 desktop
• I am using VirtualBox version 2.1.4
• VM has 512 MB of RAM with the video memory set to 128 MB
• VM uses a single vCPU
• VM has Intel VT-x, nested paging, and 3D acceleration enabled
• VM is running Windows 7 Beta

The video stream is surprisingly smooth with occasional, but very brief, periods of choppiness. I’ll attribute this partly to the fact that I am wireless and the ads on the web page contain random animation.

I wish I was as happy about my bracket as I am about VirtualBox!

Here is a screen shot of the VM settings. Read the rest of this entry »