[Cialug] Nested virtualization

[David Champion]

Can you have both Xen and VirtualBox installed on the same Host? If 
that's the case, why can't you just run Xen and get the client image set 
up to send your friend, when you're done, you can stop running the Xen 
image, and run your VirtualBox images?

Worst case - you could set up your PC to dual-boot as either the Xen 
host or VirtualBox host.

-dc

Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
> 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.
>
>