[ale] Speeding up VMs

[Phil Turmel]

On 01/10/2016 08:12 AM, DJ-Pfulio wrote:

> Since around 2013, I've been 100% KVM for production uses.  Haven't powered up
> virtualbox on my systems since then. Used Xen for 4 yrs in production, it was
> fast and stable, once running, but hostOS kernel updates would prevent guestOSes
> from booting a few times yearly.  Never had that issue with KVM (using it since
> 2010).

I switched from virtualbox on my laptop to kvm / libvirt / virt-manager
/ virt-viewer last summer.  I kept vbox on my system until November
"just in case", but never needed it again.  The only annoyance is the
sparse selection of VM toolbar functions.  The performance and stability
of the spice protocol / QXD video driver pair for windows VMs was a
pleasant surprise.

> If you'd like 1-on-1 help with this stuff, come out any Sunday and sit next to
> me with your workstation (or remote connection to the VM system) and I'm happy
> to help.

Or try the Southwest meetings on Thursdays.  :-)  (Except when Central
is meeting, though).

> For small scale stuff, I don't think anything has really changed except
> that containers have been getting much more press than they deserve (IMHO).
> Container security just isn't to a point that I'd trust outside a safe, test,
> network for trusted people.  Perhaps in another 5 yrs, Docker, LXC, LXD will be
> mature enough to trust on the internet - I dunno. No amount of claims about
> security can replace years of ACTUALLY BEING secure.

KVM runs so well, especially with kernel shared pages, that I have no
motivation to investigate containers.

Phil