Is there a better paravirtualization solution than Xen?

Question

Question:
I want to run a (para) virtual machine on my Linux console server.
Catch-22 is that the processor does not support VTX/AMDv, so I have to use para virtualization instead of normal/hardware virtualization.

Unfortunately, Xen cannot bridge the WLAN network adapter on my developer machine.
Therefore I can't use Xen, as I can't get it to work properly. If I use NAT on the developer machine, I can't be sure everything/anything works on the server, and I have experienced enough to know that it's only a question of time (most times a very short time) until this will end in disaster, so I do not want that.

The point is I want to be able to transfer the VM image from the developer machine to the server - unchanged.

Is there any other (=better) para virtualization-capable application for Linux other than Xen ?

For example, VirtualBox seemed to never to have problems with bridging network adapters to wlan0, but AFAIK, VirtualBox needs VTX/AMDv, isn't it ?

Answer 1

You can always use KVM, it uses QEMU when VT is not enabled.

Also from the Wikipedia Article:

Software-based virtualization

In the absence of hardware-assisted virtualization, VirtualBox adopts a standard >software-based virtualization approach. This mode supports 32-bit guest OSs which run in rings 0 and 3 of the Intel ring architecture.

So Virtualbox should run just fine

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EDIT: For 64 bit guests you can use QEMU. VMware Workstation relies on Binary Translation on non VT enabled hosts but it can't run 64 bit guests that way either.

Answer 2

I use both Virtualbox, and VMWare Workstation 8. I personally prefer VMWare, because to me it's faster, and I have been using it from my windows days, so you can say I'm more comfortable with it. Both packages require that the hardware virtualization features first need to be enabled in the BIOS, before they can use it. Both will give you the option to enable or disable that feature, but with it, applications running in a guest can take advantage of these virtualization technologies.

VMware is adding support for paravirtualized operating systems as they become adopted in commercial operating system distributions across its virtual infrastructure platform products.

^{Source: VMWare}

Both packages will allow you to run the guest operating system un-modified.

For a more detailed introduction, see the Wikipedia article about virtual machines.

I forgot to say, if you're using Citrix XEN, I would suggest that you stick with it.