On 10/19/2015 01:34 PM, David Sommerseth wrote:
> On 19/10/15 17:41, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> I posted the following to the
>>
>>    * Board index <https://forums.virtualbox.org/index.php> *‹* General
>>      <https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=12> *‹* VirtualBox on Linux
>>      Hosts <https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=7>
>>
>> a VirtualBox list similar to this SL list.  Interestingly, the post currently
>> has 11 views but 0 responses.
>> At this point, I am beginning to assume that VirtualBox has a significant
>> limitation -- the typical VirtualBox NAT network driver
>> that used to work with both an IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 ISP connection on the
>> host no longer works with 802.11 on the host.
>>
>> Evidently because of the large number of non-professional enthusiasts (typical
>> end-users) who post to the VirtualBox lists, one uses an alias
>> handle; this does not seem to be necessary on the SL list.
>>
>> Assuming that VirtualBox cannot "virtualize" a 802.11 connection, is there any
>> other virtualization system that is licensed for free (no longer the case
>> with VMWare) that can use an existing virtual machine (e.g., vdi, vmdk files),
>> that will support the guest and host sharing resources (network, shared folders,
>> etc.) and provides a reasonably user friendly interface (in a worst case, a
>> script that can encapsulate all of the text commands to the virtualization
>> system)?
>> Note the host is X86-64, but the guest is IA-32.
>>
>> Any assistance (based on "real world" experience) will be appreciated.
> I manage three servers using KVM and managed using libvirt (virsh from the
> command line or virtual-manager from the GUI).  Currently my bare-metal boxes
> run SL6.x, but I'm running a variety of virtual machines (Windows, SL 6 and 7,
> CentOS 5).  I have had no particular issues with this setup.  However I am
> considering to test out oVirt as an alternative management tool, which also
> makes use of KVM and libvirt under the hood.
>
> Two of bare metal boxes have 4 physical NICs each, so I have isolated one NIC
> for "management", which means that's the physical network and IP subnet I use
> to log into the bare metal via SSH and such.  Then I have configured a bridge
> on one of the other interfaces, which the virtual machines uses.  One of the
> subnets actually have an external DHCP server, which these virtual machines do
> pick up as if it was a physical stand alone machine.
>
> With 802.11, I presume you mean wireless networking.  You can configure that
> several ways with libvirt.  If you want the VMs to act/look like as physical
> machines on your network, you will need to establish a bridge where the
> wireless network is a member.  I have not tested that.
>
> Another approach is to use the built in NAT support which libvirt can
> configure automatically.  There you define a libvirt virtual network, with
> it's own private network range and decide if this should be NATed or not.  If
> your VMs are connected to this network (also configured as a bridge, often
> virbr0...).
>
> And you can also play with macvtap as well.  That behaves closer to bridging
> with another physical network interface, but without using a bridge.  There
> are several pitfalls with this approach, pretty much decided by your needs and
> the rest of your network infrastructure.
>
> Performance wise, I am quite satisfied with both bridging and the virtual
> network support which is built into libvirt.  One of the sites have actually
> virtualized the firewall, even though a native bare-metal firewall would
> perform better the virtualized firewall isn't that far away.
>
> It may not be as shiny and polished as VirtualBox or vmware.  But it ships
> out-of-the-box on SL5, SL6 and SL7, all you need to do is to 'yum install
> libvirt virtual-manager virsh'.  And any management tool supporting libvirt
> should be able to manage all the KVM based VMs without much extra hassle.  And
> the management tools doesn't necessarily need to run on the bare-metal host
> either.  It can run on a completely different machine, just using either SSH
> or the libvirt protocol directly.
>
>
> --
> kind regards,
>
> David Sommerseth
>
Thank you for the kind reply; however, you seem to be addressing a 
somewhat different situation.

I am not virtualizing servers or anything like that.  For this use, I do 
not need a bare iron hypervisor that then can run various
OS (supervisor) virtual machine images.  I need a real Linux host (SL 7) 
that can run MS Windows under it as a guest.  VMWare (workstation) and
VirtualBox both do this as "applications" under Linux, not as 
hypervisors over linux (although VMWare also licenses a hypervisor, and 
there are
the licensed for free hypervisors).  I have tried Crossover ("commercial 
supported" Wine) and it is inadequate for my needs (too many "gotchas" 
with some
of the MS Windows applications my institution forces upon us for certain 
purposes).  I also want a minimum migration path for the current
MS Windows virtual machine files (vdi , vmdk), preferably a virtual 
machine application under a Linux host that directly will use the 
existing vdi, vmdk files.  I understand that once I boot MS Win within 
whatever non-VirtualBox "machine" I use, the MS Win VirtualBox drivers 
that one must install will not be applicable and must be replaced with 
whatever, if any, are needed by replacement "machine"; however, I first 
need to get such a replacement.

Does anyone have a solution for using the host SL 7 802.11 (wireless, 
wifi) ISP network connection to provide the NAT used by VirtualBox?  (At 
the university,
we are compelled to use Eduroam; at home, our ISP is Verizon -- both 
over 802.11 .)

Thanks again,

Yasha Karant