Looking for VM development workstation software combo ideas

Which Virtualization softwear do you use?

  • Windows Hyper-V

    Votes: 3 23.1%
  • VMware ESX(i)

    Votes: 8 61.5%
  • Xen

    Votes: 2 15.4%
  • Parallels

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Virtualbox

    Votes: 3 23.1%
  • KVM

    Votes: 5 38.5%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 7.7%

  • Total voters
    13
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Bazajgee

New Member
Jan 9, 2018
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Hi,

I've been using a combination of Mint 17 as a host with VirtualBox running my development VM's including my every day Windows 10 workstation that I need for my daily duties at work. The downside I face is my Windows Vm degrades in performance over a matter or 24 to 48 hours, to the point where I have shut it down completely then relaunch it to recover from the lag. I won't get into the specifics of the issue besides saying I've been trying to find a solution for over a year with help from various forums including VirtualBox. I've been forced in to spending more time in the native Mint to try and do my daily work. However I can not do completely without using a windows based admin station for my job function.

I love that I can use Hot Corners to jump effortlessly between desktops and running VM's. I now see that there is a port of sorts for Windows Hot Corners called winXcorners. I also enjoy having a user friendly GUI Host desktop to work from. Mint in this case. That, in combination with Windows 10 support for multiple desktops might mean that I can run Windows as the Host mitigating the degradation issues I'm experiencing.

A few years ago the current setup was suggested to me as a stable, GUI friendly solution to hosting my development VM's before deploying to production. I can not afford to much downtime on a rebuild and in the end it must offer near the same functionality with host stability as a primary factor.

Do I move to another Hypervisor product like Proxmox, ESXi, or stick with Virtualbox on a Windows host? Etc, Etc, Some options will have a cost, some will not support the functionality and work flow described above..

Many might have views the best options for this, so I'm listening to your experiences and recommendations.

Currently my hardware setup is an high end Asus motherboard with loads of RAM running a drive for the host OS and an LSI hardware RAID storage partitioned with Ext4 and NTFS volumes. VM's are hosted from the linux partition while in an attempt to rule out the performance issue my windows 10 image is currently hosted on a mounted standalone HDD.

TIA
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Some more details (#of vms, os type, primary requiremens [speed, stability, disksizes/speed, compute ]) might be helpful :)
 

Bazajgee

New Member
Jan 9, 2018
3
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Probably no more than 3 running VM's at any one time. Mostly Linux and Windows. The one Windows 10 on all the time. Others are just for development and evaluation purposes. If I like them I'll move them to production.
Stability - yes as stated in the above. Speed, disk and compute will be a function of my hardware. I have a 9TB RAID 6 local attached array off of an IBM server LSI card.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
113
Well I'd probably go with the Win10 box (always on) as host and then use the temporary vms via client software (virtualbox, vmware whatever you prefer).
I personally use ESX but not sure thats not overkill for your case, but you could do AIO with direct gpu passthrough (several threads in here) as well
 

Bazajgee

New Member
Jan 9, 2018
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Respect. But with draconian updating system from MS that doesn't sound like I'd hit my "stability" check points. Even with delaying push updates from MS, I've been left too many time waiting for PC's to 'update'. I'd rather use a controllable Linux based host to be honest... or a true hypervisor but then I think I'd loose the ease of switching between VM's on the fly from a desktop environment...?
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
6,626
1,767
113
Depends on always on for you - 24/7 ? or only when working...

You could go thin client as well - ie host a bunch of vms on esx or similar and just use a thin client to connect