Is it possible, and if so advisable, to run KVM and VirtualBox guests on the same host system?
7 thoughts on - Can KVM And VirtualBox Co-exist On Same Host?
Never tried it. It sounds like a really, really bad idea…..
+1 the KVM and VBox modules would conflict.
— Arun Khan
That is the easy answer, they do conflict but it does not mean you cannot load them both up. You just cannot run them both at the same time, in order to run one vs the other you need to remove some kernal mods and insert some etc depending on which one you want to run.
So the answer is yes you can if you want to you just have to do some work, here is a decent write up that goes into some detail but there may be some better examples – http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/kvm-virtualbox.html
my .02 YMMV blah blah blah :)
Thanks,
I found a write up on scripts that detect and unload/load the kvm and kvm-intel modules. In fact, the very one that you referenced. And I had already gathered that one probably cannot run both a kvm and a vb hypervisor on the same host at the same time. I was wondering if there was any other issues respecting having both of them installed on the same host at the same time even if only one, or neither, is running?
A supplemental question: Is there any way to convert a VB guest image into a KVM guest image? The VM image in question is MicroSoft’s IE6 development image for MS-XPproSP3. We have a government mandated program that is written in J# and the last OS to support that is XP. I have to get some sort of virtualised XP guest running and as the transferable licenses for that OS are somewhat scarce I thought I might try and get the legal VM version running. However, I would prefer to stick with KVM if at all possible.
Greetings,
—– Original Message —
If you’re taking that route, I recommend looking in to libguestfs to mount the image like you would a disk.
Hi,
I don’t know if you’d do it on a server, but I have run Genymotion, a VirtualBox based Android emulator, on my desktop which was simultaneously running a couple of KVM VMs as an oVirt node. It’s not a huge spec machine, performance was awful, but I don’t know how much of that was because of resource competition and how much was because I was swapping.
7 thoughts on - Can KVM And VirtualBox Co-exist On Same Host?
Never tried it. It sounds like a really, really bad idea…..
+1 the KVM and VBox modules would conflict.
— Arun Khan
That is the easy answer, they do conflict but it does not mean you cannot load them both up. You just cannot run them both at the same time, in order to run one vs the other you need to remove some kernal mods and insert some etc depending on which one you want to run.
So the answer is yes you can if you want to you just have to do some work, here is a decent write up that goes into some detail but there may be some better examples –
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/kvm-virtualbox.html
my .02 YMMV blah blah blah :)
Thanks,
I found a write up on scripts that detect and unload/load the kvm and kvm-intel modules. In fact, the very one that you referenced. And I had already gathered that one probably cannot run both a kvm and a vb hypervisor on the same host at the same time. I was wondering if there was any other issues respecting having both of them installed on the same host at the same time even if only one, or neither, is running?
A supplemental question: Is there any way to convert a VB guest image into a KVM guest image? The VM image in question is MicroSoft’s IE6 development image for MS-XPproSP3. We have a government mandated program that is written in J# and the last OS to support that is XP. I have to get some sort of virtualised XP guest running and as the transferable licenses for that OS are somewhat scarce I thought I might try and get the legal VM version running. However, I would prefer to stick with KVM if at all possible.
Greetings,
—– Original Message —
If you’re taking that route, I recommend looking in to libguestfs to mount the image like you would a disk.
Hi,
I don’t know if you’d do it on a server, but I have run Genymotion, a VirtualBox based Android emulator, on my desktop which was simultaneously running a couple of KVM VMs as an oVirt node. It’s not a huge spec machine, performance was awful, but I don’t know how much of that was because of resource competition and how much was because I was swapping.
Cheers, Dave.