In a world of virtualization, should Windows host Linux or should Linux host Windows?

[Rick]

Interesting article.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2806


In a world of virtualization, should Windows host Linux or should Linux host Windows?


What say you?


Rick

[birty]

one big factor is that if you have windows and linux installed on your pc then you can install a linux virtual machine in windows for free but if you want to install a windows vm in linux you will need to have an additional licence so I would always host linux under windows cos its cheaper

[stonedge]

I run Suse 9.3 in VMware on my Windows box at home. This is handy as I only check my email in Evolution as Outlook is a virus trap. It runs really good with a Gig of Ram.
This works out nice as I pretty much only use Windows for games and VMware doesn't seem to support hardware acceleration.

I also run WinXP in WMware on my Suse 9.3 box at work. This for some reason isn't as good. The first few times is was smooth, but now WinXP is very sluggish.

As for needed extra licenses, I don't see what you mean. If you run 1 copy of Windows under Linux or 1 copy of linux under Windows, you are still using only 1 copy of Windows.

[alexr]

Emulating linux under windows with cygwin seems easy enough for me.

[hyperaxe]

I run different linux distros (e.g. Debian, CentOS, etc.) using VMWare on my Windows XP and it seems to be an ideal setup for me. It helps me to use Linux to host my app server and Windows as a development environment for programming tools that only run on Windows (e.g. IDEs, SDKs, etc.).

Moreover, I seldom find the need for Windows when I am inside Linux. ;)

[birty]

As for needed extra licenses, I don't see what you mean. If you run 1 copy of Windows under Linux or 1 copy of linux under Windows, you are still using only 1 copy of Windows.
most windows licences only allow a single installation, so if you have two copies installed even if they are on the same machine and cant be run at the same time you in theory need 2 licences

[zenic]

Definately linux under window same reason as birty cause its free.

[glowworm]

Cost of licenses isn't an issue for me because my day job is for an educational institution we get MS licenses for "free", no limits to the number of installs and no record keeping required.

I did a few tests for a medium sized virtualised 2K3 server (3 instances) and I had better performance running 2K3 VM's on a Linux base than 2K3 VM's on a 2K3 base.

Those tests were using the vmware server product. We are still to finish testing with MS's virtual server - but initial results are that VMWare is better.

As always YMMV with this one depending on what resources are available.

I must say thought the results of our testing so far are very impressive and it's a technology we *will* be implementing live in September. It's certainly sounding the death knell for a bank of servers doing different things.