----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joseph Areeda" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2 October, 2012 10:51:52 PM
> Subject: Re: The opposite SL and VirtualBox problem
> 
> Well, I'm not going to touch Nico's comment because I don't know KVM.
> 
> For me it's the Devil you know kind of thing.  I've had good
> experience
> with Vbox on multiple OS and am just playing in my comfort zone.
> 
> I do have reasons to explore other VMs but none of them pressing.  I
> just want to install one of the University's "free" site license copy
> of
> Windows as a courtesy to our students.

Even though Nico have some good points, I feel some of them are also dated due to the shape of virt-manager in earlier versions.  In EL6.3, it's become quite good IMO and very usable.  If you're running KVM locally on your own computer, there would be no benefits of using vbox IMO.

You might find the RHEL6 Virtualisation guides quite handy though,

Getting started:
<https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Getting_Started_Guide/index.html>

Administration Guide:
<https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Administration_Guide/index.html>

Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide:
<https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Host_Configuration_and_Guest_Installation_Guide/index.html>

Security Guide:
<https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Security_Guide/index.html>

V2V Guide (import VMs from other vendors into KVM)
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/V2V_Guide/index.html

You basically need to install libvirt and virt-manager on your box, and you're ready to go.  To get SPICE support, you need to install some extra spice packages as well, which will improve the graphical console performance considerably (compared to VNC).  All packages and dependencies are available in SL6.  Give it a shot, and you'll see it's not necessarily that much harder than vbox. 

You can also run Windows guests within KVM.  And there's even virtio drivers available [1] to improve the performance of disk and network IO.


kind regards,

David Sommerseth


[1] <http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers>


> > On 10/2/12 3:15 AM, David Sommerseth wrote:
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Joseph Areeda" <[log in to unmask]>
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Sent: Tuesday, 2 October, 2012 12:33:59 AM
> >> Subject: The opposite SL and VirtualBox problem
> >>
> >> I want to run Windows as a guest system on my Sl6.3 box.
> >>
> >> Installing vbox from the Oracle repository gives me an error
> >> trying
> >> to
> >> create the kernel modules.
> > Just a silly question.  Why bother with VirtualBox when you have
> > KVM built into the OS?  Using the SPICE protocol (yum search
> > spice) and you'll even get a decent console performance.  And it's
> > really easy to setup and configure using virt-manager.
> >
> >
> > kind regards,
> >
> > David Sommerseth
> >
> > xxx
> >
>