Wheel inside a wheel
August 20, 2020 10:39 AM Subscribe
Run nested virtualizations on a PureOS (debian) laptop, or use a hosted solution?
I have a PureOS laptop that I love.
I want to run a Windows application that is likely to demand some computing horsepower, and my Internet connection will need to be rock-solid as well. Commands must be processed very quickly.
The PureOS forums have warded me off trying to run Windows within qemu-kvm as guest 1. (But I might try it anyway.) Some people are apparently attempting to run Ubuntu as guest of PureOS, then install and run Windows as the guest of Ubuntu. Sounds bananas but I almost have it working.
Apparently there are hosted solutions that might allow me to set up an Ubuntu host and run Windows inside it. But I'm wondering about performance and responsiveness. The application I want to run has to be able to process commands very quickly.
Another consideration is the demand on this laptop. I don't want to fry it within the first year of ownership.
I may have to bail down the road and go for the Windows laptop, but I'm not ready to throw that kind of money at the problem yet.
What do y'all think?
I have a PureOS laptop that I love.
I want to run a Windows application that is likely to demand some computing horsepower, and my Internet connection will need to be rock-solid as well. Commands must be processed very quickly.
The PureOS forums have warded me off trying to run Windows within qemu-kvm as guest 1. (But I might try it anyway.) Some people are apparently attempting to run Ubuntu as guest of PureOS, then install and run Windows as the guest of Ubuntu. Sounds bananas but I almost have it working.
Apparently there are hosted solutions that might allow me to set up an Ubuntu host and run Windows inside it. But I'm wondering about performance and responsiveness. The application I want to run has to be able to process commands very quickly.
Another consideration is the demand on this laptop. I don't want to fry it within the first year of ownership.
I may have to bail down the road and go for the Windows laptop, but I'm not ready to throw that kind of money at the problem yet.
What do y'all think?
I'm not sure why you're being waved off doing Windows as guest 1. Nested KVM is possible, I've done it as a party trick to show running KVM in a container and then KVM again, etc.
Sounds like unnecessary overhead. What reason(s) have you been given to do this?
If you are willing to do hosted solutions, you can run Windows via Azure, AWS, etc. at an hourly rate.
posted by jzb at 11:40 AM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Sounds like unnecessary overhead. What reason(s) have you been given to do this?
If you are willing to do hosted solutions, you can run Windows via Azure, AWS, etc. at an hourly rate.
posted by jzb at 11:40 AM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Count me among those who would be truly astonished to find that using an extra virtualization layer as a shim is anywhere even close to the Right Thing for getting Windows running inside a VM on PureOS.
As long as the CPU you're using supports hardware virtualization and you have enough RAM in the machine to devote enough of it to guest use as you need to, compute performance is likely to be completely adequate. As long as you install the appropriate virtio disk and network drivers inside the Windows guest, I/O performance likewise. Graphics performance perhaps less so, but nesting VMs could only ever make that worse, not better.
Ubuntu is a similar enough hosting environment to PureOS that I can't think of any reason why insuperable showstoppers would exist with one but not the other.
For what it's worth, I ran various Windows server installations as KVM guests inside a school server running Debian as a host OS for about ten years, with no major issues. Performance was fine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:16 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
As long as the CPU you're using supports hardware virtualization and you have enough RAM in the machine to devote enough of it to guest use as you need to, compute performance is likely to be completely adequate. As long as you install the appropriate virtio disk and network drivers inside the Windows guest, I/O performance likewise. Graphics performance perhaps less so, but nesting VMs could only ever make that worse, not better.
Ubuntu is a similar enough hosting environment to PureOS that I can't think of any reason why insuperable showstoppers would exist with one but not the other.
For what it's worth, I ran various Windows server installations as KVM guests inside a school server running Debian as a host OS for about ten years, with no major issues. Performance was fine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:16 PM on August 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Have you tried running the windows application under Wine and bypassing virtualization entirely?
posted by Poldo at 12:59 PM on August 20, 2020
posted by Poldo at 12:59 PM on August 20, 2020
>I don't want to fry it within the first year of ownership.
Rent a monster server from any one of a number or providers: Azure (for purity of the platform), AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace and more. Their network connections will be on SLA contracts for reliability and maximal bandwidth / minimal latency. Their CPU's will have interconnects that make a great laptop look like a toy. They will be designed to run at full power for their service lifetime. The cost to you might be (that is, if you do it wrong* or need exceptional computational power) up to a few hundred dollars but your management device won't be harmed.
*: If you do it right, it's not even tens of dollars.
posted by k3ninho at 3:15 PM on August 20, 2020
Rent a monster server from any one of a number or providers: Azure (for purity of the platform), AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace and more. Their network connections will be on SLA contracts for reliability and maximal bandwidth / minimal latency. Their CPU's will have interconnects that make a great laptop look like a toy. They will be designed to run at full power for their service lifetime. The cost to you might be (that is, if you do it wrong* or need exceptional computational power) up to a few hundred dollars but your management device won't be harmed.
*: If you do it right, it's not even tens of dollars.
posted by k3ninho at 3:15 PM on August 20, 2020
Response by poster: At flabdablet's suggestion I tried installing Windows as a guest of PureOS within qemu / kvm in spite of what I'd heard elsewhere and it's up and running! I might also try VMWare for better performance.
Azure and Google Cloud are definitely not for me... maybe for someone else with Windows sysadmin experience.
Thanks to all who responded!
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:51 PM on August 20, 2020
Azure and Google Cloud are definitely not for me... maybe for someone else with Windows sysadmin experience.
Thanks to all who responded!
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:51 PM on August 20, 2020
If you wanted to do this properly you'd install Ubuntu as a PureOS guest, Windows as an Ubuntu guest, then the entire PureOS userland inside Windows Services for Linux :-)
Glad you got a result. I can't see VMWare giving you significantly more than you already have with the possible exception of graphics performance. I'd be willing to believe that they could have paravirtual GPU drivers that are a little further along than kvm's, but I'd be very surprised to learn that there's more than a ciggie paper between them on disk, network and CPU.
posted by flabdablet at 9:32 PM on August 20, 2020
Glad you got a result. I can't see VMWare giving you significantly more than you already have with the possible exception of graphics performance. I'd be willing to believe that they could have paravirtual GPU drivers that are a little further along than kvm's, but I'd be very surprised to learn that there's more than a ciggie paper between them on disk, network and CPU.
posted by flabdablet at 9:32 PM on August 20, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by mhoye at 11:38 AM on August 20, 2020 [4 favorites]