Virtual Windows Servers on Linux laptop...

[ward at pong.be (Ward Vandewege)]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 09:54:52AM -0500, Matthew Gillen wrote:
> Xen won't work with an OS that isn't designed to work with it (Windoze,
> probably Solaris) unless you have a very new processor. 

Basically your CPU needs to support hardware virtualization. For AMD, this
feature is called Pacifica; for Intel it's called Vanderpool.

Most new machines should have CPUs with that feature. If you're not sure,
have a look on Wikipedia - the pages on AMD and Intel CPUs are super
detailed and very helpful.

Just one last word of warning - some laptop vendors have been *deliberately*
disabling hardware virtualization in the BIOS on machines they sell, with no
option for the owner of the machine to enable it, 'because they don not test
it'. See for instance here:

  http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1051601&admit=-682735245+1171380665964+28353475

This seems to have only happened for machines with Intel CPUs, by the way. I
think it's mostly resolved now - there was quite a bit of public outcry and
the vendors have been publishing updates for their BIOSes, but caveat emptor
:)

Yet another reason why a proprietary BIOS is dangerous!

Thanks,
Ward.

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