[Cialug] Nested virtualization

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

Has anyone tried running either VirtualBox and Xen on the same 
machine[1]? Alternatively, how about running Xen within VirtualBox[2]?

The reason i'd consider this is that i've settled on VirtualBox as my 
virtualization system of choice and have it installed, but a friend of 
mine in Washington state has a Xen VM set up for me as a backup to my 
servers. He set it up with a distro that is more difficult to manage 
than i'm used to, and i think the easiest way to fix it would be to 
build a Xen VM set up as i want it here, export it, send it to his 
machine, and import it there. But to do that i have to have a 
functioning Xen environment.

[1] This is a bad idea that--according to the documentation--will
    cause the machine to crash if both VirtualBox and Xen are
    running VMs at the same time. The reason is that they don't
    know what each other are doing and will try to use the same
    resources.

[2] Also a bad idea since virtualization extensions are not passed
    to VMs, but *may* work for paravirtualized guests, again,
    according to the documentation.

-- 
Daniel A. Ramaley
Network Engineer 2

Dial Center 118, Drake University
2407 Carpenter Ave / Des Moines IA 50311 USA
Tel: +1 515 271-4540
Fax: +1 515 271-1938
E-mail: daniel.ramaley at drake.edu