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I'm looking for an open source solution to launch, manage and interact with VMs (10-15 VMs, Linux and mostly Windows Servers) through a web interface. I bumped into archipel , karessansui , oVirt, Virtualbox/phpvirtualbox, Xen, KVM ... and, I'm really confused.

Ideally, the solution needs to be easy to install (an all in one iso containing the hypervisor may be?) and to use.

Recommendations?

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VirtualBox is quite easy to set up and use, and has a user-made web interface although virtulisation is quite an advanced concept for most. It's probably not best to ask "which should I use" more "how can I install x". – tombull89 Sep 7 '11 at 10:24
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I don't mean to sound silly, but, why does it have to be open source? Why not just go for a proven technology such as Hyper-V server or ESXI, which are both free and get a web interface for them (there are a few that are free)... After all, if you are not going to look at the code any way (I am guessing), why not just get a solid solution... In the long run, if you are attempting to run VMs, it will do the job just as well! – William Hilsum Sep 7 '11 at 11:29
@tombull89 but you can't interact with VMs using virtualbox's web interface – lisa17 Sep 12 '11 at 8:49
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closed as not constructive by Nifle, tombull89, sblair, Gareth, Sathya♦ Sep 8 '11 at 4:25

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You might want to decide for the Hypervisor, i.e. the virtualization backend technology first and then decide for a web based management solution. Picking the hypervisor primary on its interface is not recommended in my opinion. We use KVM for virtualization, which i can recommend, especially for linux guests. If you want to manage KVM VMs through a web interface there are multiple options, one of them you named already, oVirt, which is based on libvirt. If I remember correctly, libvirt can also manage XEN VMs, but i'm not sure if those are also supported by oVirt. An alternative is Proxmox VE, which can manage KVM and openVZ guests and does not depend on libvirt.

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Does any of the available web interfaces show the virtual machine running in a new window/tab? The thing is, I've tested virtualbox/phpvirtualbox and the web interface just starts the VMs. – gh0st__ Sep 8 '11 at 22:38
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I don't know what exactly you mean. proxmox contains a java applet VNC viewer, so you can actually interact with the virtual machine from your browser if thats what you mean. – barbaz Sep 9 '11 at 9:44
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