Rich Teer wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a couple of situations for which Xen or VirtualBox would > seem to be ideal. The first is for a Win2003 server running M$'s > database, and the second is for running a bookkeeping program > once or twice per month. > > My question is: how do Xen and VirtualBox compare and contrast, > and which would be the better solution for the usage scenarios > described above (and why)? More generally, why would one pick > one technology over the other? > > TIA, > > Hi Rich. Xen is by design aimed primarily at modified guests with Xen kernel support, such as NetBSD and Linux. Xen does support Windows if your processor has VT or AMD-V extensions, but it is very slow. VirtualBox is like a competitor to VMware and is aimed for developers and workstations, and is quite fast at running Windows, and has decent/good driver support. xVM (Xen) does not have Windows drivers. Little quirks will happen with Windows on Xen, such as needing to use tablet input setting instead of default due to generic mouse driver problems, which might be fixed by drivers later on. xVM (Xen) is one of Sun's sever consolidation weapons, while VirtualBox is more on the user side. I'd pick VirtualBox for running Windows guests at the moment due to performance. Some people here have tried dual quad core and still have horrible performance with xVM and Windows. In both instances VirtualBox will probably better suit you.
James
