Virtualisation technologies (Was: [nzlug] Screen resolution)

[Peter Butler]

>
>> I tried out and gave up on xen about 9 months ago, because it just 
>> wasn't mature enough. tbh this says it's not yet time try try again ):
>>
>> Mind you, vmware server does everything I need - and I don't need to 
>> know the differences under the bonnet, I just want loads of test 
>> servers that I can easily reset!
>>   
>
> There are three current types of virtualisation in use in these 
> technologies - paravirtualisation, where the guest OS is aware it's 
> being virtualised through modifications to the kernel; hardware-assist 
> virtualisation which makes use of intel VT or AMD pacifica extensions; 
> and full virtualisation, which is basically a binary-level rewrite.

I'm not sure if this is relevant to the original poster's needs, but I 
often use qemu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/about.html) to run 
other operating systems on my desktop machine. It's both an emulator and 
a virtualiser (using kqemu), it's easy to set up and allows me to run 
Windows without the pain and humiliation of having an actual Windows 
partition (just an image file). It also lets me play with other 
operating systems without breaking anything.

The whole set of utilities has also been released under the GPL, where 
previously the kqemu kernel accelerator was closed-source.

I often see lists of virtualisation technologies but I hardly ever see 
qemu mentioned, so I thought I'd give it a plug.

Cheers

Peter