Is there a Hypervisor or another method that allows to boot natively or as virtual machines 2 separate systems in parallel (say Win7 and WinXP), and have full hardware access to all PC HW (not a limited subset of scaled down virtual HW) from each of both running systems while freely switching and communicating btw them (remote access, network file sharing, Hypervisor Console access) any time?
Booting two systems in parallel on the same PC?
Started by
sambul61
, Jan 17 2011 07:35 PM
4 replies to this topic
#2
RescueTech
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Posted 17 January 2011 - 07:49 PM
Xen is probably your best bet IF your mobo/cpu support IOMMU.
Xen: http://www.xen.org/
IOMMU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU
Xen: http://www.xen.org/
IOMMU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU
#3
sambul61
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Posted 17 January 2011 - 09:25 PM
I mean FULL native (transparent) hardware access, including unrestricted range of PCI(E) devices like TV Tuners etc. using their native drivers instead of scaled down virtual drivers.
As to Xen, its implemented on a very few HW platforms so far, while not certainly delivering the above functionality even on these platforms (may be...).
"Device drivers run within a privileged guest OS (Linux) rather than within Xen itself. This approach provides compatibility with the majority of device hardware supported by Linux."
What's interesting, its extremely hard to find, what HW platforms Xen is so far implemented on until you actually download the ISO only to find a small Readme file saying you can't install it on your PC or laptop since it supports only a few (2-3 total) brand name laptop models from specific vendors, as I recall.
Another practical question would be, is it possible to install and run Xen in parallel with an OS like Win7 or Ubuntu with the possibility to switch btw them without reboot?
As to Xen, its implemented on a very few HW platforms so far, while not certainly delivering the above functionality even on these platforms (may be...).
"Device drivers run within a privileged guest OS (Linux) rather than within Xen itself. This approach provides compatibility with the majority of device hardware supported by Linux."
What's interesting, its extremely hard to find, what HW platforms Xen is so far implemented on until you actually download the ISO only to find a small Readme file saying you can't install it on your PC or laptop since it supports only a few (2-3 total) brand name laptop models from specific vendors, as I recall.
Another practical question would be, is it possible to install and run Xen in parallel with an OS like Win7 or Ubuntu with the possibility to switch btw them without reboot?
#4
RescueTech
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Posted 17 January 2011 - 10:49 PM
OK, I don't think that you fully understand the concept of IOMMU.
IF YOUR HARDWARE SUPPORTS IOMMU, then you can pass-through Xen the PCI devices (video card, tuner card, sound card, NIC, etc.) to the guest OS and load up the drivers there. It doesn't matter if the host OS (Linux) supports them or not. These devices will be passed through to the guest OS. That's the whole purpose of IOMMU.
Xen will run pretty much anywhere, but you want to make sure that (a) your CPU has support for virtualization, and (
that your mobo/cpu both support IOMMU (for this situation).
If not both (a) and (
above, then you are wasting your time.
IF YOUR HARDWARE SUPPORTS IOMMU, then you can pass-through Xen the PCI devices (video card, tuner card, sound card, NIC, etc.) to the guest OS and load up the drivers there. It doesn't matter if the host OS (Linux) supports them or not. These devices will be passed through to the guest OS. That's the whole purpose of IOMMU.
Xen will run pretty much anywhere, but you want to make sure that (a) your CPU has support for virtualization, and (
that your mobo/cpu both support IOMMU (for this situation).If not both (a) and (
above, then you are wasting your time.
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