What to choose for test lab virtualization?

Question

OpenVZ

In general, there is a simple home “server” (well, an ordinary machine with a lot of memory and a quad), on which I really want to keep virtual machines for work and study. I started with the simplest option - Hyper-V ... I worked for several days, and I didn’t like the speed and quality of work at all, so I began to think about other solutions. ESXi is a good idea, but it will not work on my hardware, and an upgrade is not planned yet. Accordingly, there are options based on linux, here a little at a dead end - and the reviews about kvm are somehow not so hot, and about xen and about openvz, but somehow I still lean towards kvm, the only thing I didn’t quite understand from Google is how be with the installation of guest OS? If it’s still clear with windows, you can connect to the created machine via VNC and install everything, but what about installing linux? This is the part I don't quite understand. Just a server without a gui, and I would not like to raise it there. Advise - what is still better to use for a home test lab?

Answer 1

gui via http will suit? see Proxmox

Answer 2

There are other options:
XenServer is also a hypervisor similar to ESXi (but with more support for desktop hardware).
Linux + VmWare Player, Oracle VirtualBox.
Pros: Free, reliable, support for almost all hardware.
Cons: you need to automate the autostart and shutdown of the VM yourself.
OpenVZ - only linux can do it (this is vitrualization on containers).
But I can’t say anything about KVM.

Answer 3

what about installing linux? This is the part I don't quite understand. Just a server without a gui, and I would not like to raise it there

qemu also provides VNC, you can run qemu on a headless machine... -vnc ip:port
In addition, all sorts of virt-managers will help you.

Answer 4

I think the simplest solution is to use Citrix products.
There are two options. Free Xen Cloud Platform and shareware Citrix Xen Server. Shareware because the license terms require you to obtain a license on the Citrix website. The license is issued for a year. Accordingly, it must be renewed every year.
There is a graphical control panel for control. For the first time it will be enough. The manager works under Windows. There is a version for Linux, but it works for me with problems. Intermittently hangs when trying to connect to the virtual machine server.
Well, from Citrix there is a free converter of physical machines to virtual ones, if, for example, you need to transfer the working system to the virtualizer.
This is from my experience. I did not have to work with ESXi, so I can’t say anything about this decision.

Answer 5

The main question is whether there is support for VT in the CPU, since there are variations of such a CPU without it. If it (VT) is not there, then it’s quite sad, but you can set 3.x vmvar. Try to put the 4th vmvar - simply and tastefully. A raid is a good thing, but useless for a laboratory. LAN card? Onboard gigabit is not enough?

Answer 6

I advise you to look towards Proxmox. A very nice system. And there you have both KVM and openVZ practically out of the box.

Answer 7

to work with ESXi you will need a separate host. i.e. a host with virtual machines and a separate working machine for work and connection - from the ESXi console you can only change the network settings on the host and the admin password.
You can completely work on Hyper-V - I now have two virtual machines running on a 2008 server at home with 4 gigabytes of memory - Linux for 256 memory and Win8 for 3 gigabytes, there are no special brakes, when developing I carcass virtual machines.
By the way, I have a system on ssd, virtual machines on a screw, it really speeds up the system

Answer 8

well, less than 4 gigs per virtualization server - there will be no brakes, even if you give a gig to a virtual machine