What is your host OS for virtualbox

Question

I am looking for the smallest (most minimal) host OS distribution that can run virtualbox without major limitation.

What would you recommend?

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Adding more information as requested:

1. I have tried ESXi and it would not recognize the network card ... the only one that I can find is rather expensive ...
2. The server itself is a Core2Duo with 4 HD's and 6GB
3. We're running windows test images for product testing (XP, Vista, Windows 7), window 2003 server image for staging (includes IIS and SQL) and they are running all ok on VMWare server, however, we'd like to max this out with the free tools available
4. The host OS can be large on disk (there is enough disk space) but almost bare-bone in terms of it's own need for CPU and Disk IO - other than what's required by the VirtualBox environment, of course. That is, no unnecessary services, indexing activity, daemons, etc.
   1. Normal networking environment needs to be supported, but nothing too crazy (each image gets it's own ip from an external DHCP server, etc)

Is there an ISO or a distribution already built for such purpose?

I hope these details help ... thank you for your input.

Answer 1

Ubuntu seems to be one of the better supported Linux hosts and guests with VirtualBox - and I am guessing Ubuntu Server would work very nicely as a result. I doubt it is the absolute most minimal host - if that is the prime concern you may want to look at ESXi as a virtualization solution instead.

Update

Check out Ubuntu Server JeOS - http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos

• Now part of the standard server ISO image
• Less than 380MB installed footprint
• Specialized server Kernel (-virtual)
• Optimised for VMWare ESX, VMWare Server and KVM
• Intel or AMD x86 architecture
• Minimum memory 128MB
• No graphical environment preloaded as it is aimed at server virtual appliance
• Working knowledge of linux administration and debian packages recommended to start building your own appliance

The built-in KVM might be interesting to you as well instead of VirtualBox - http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/technologies/virtualization

Answer 2

Have a look at Ubuntu Server distribution, which is without GUI, only installs services which are required or selected during the installation.

Debian minimal install one of the option look here & here for help.

Adding Virtualbox Repos to Ubuntu server / Debian would be simple look here for help

Answer 3

hum... Here in my corporate, we are using a INET Debian distrib wich is a really tiny distrib without any Graphical interface.

Our Virtualbox machine is working really fine and all options are ready to use.

Actually most of time if you can't use all of the Virtualbox's options it's mean that you don't have a corect CPU (is not the case here) or your VT instructions has not been enable on the BIOS previously or you have download and install an OSE version of virtualbox.

Answer 4

VMWare ESXi hypervisor is minimalistic and free. The only drawback, as I see it, is that an administration client software requires windows. You can always have a minimalistic linux install running xen on top, that shouldn't be hard to install yourself, but ESXi's footrpint will still be smaller.

If by virtualbox you actually mean VirtualBox then it is the same as with xen, you install minimal linux distro (doesn't really matter which one) and then this package with its dependencies. The rest depends on your tasks.

Answer 5

Take a look at VMWare ESXi again.

Just pick up a cheap ESXi supported Intel EXPI9301CT PCIe x1 NIC (~$35). The management of ESXi using the free vSphere Client is very similar to the VMWare Server you're used to. Since you're running mostly Microsoft guests, you might consider Microsoft's free Hyper-V Server as well, but I prefer ESXi myself.

Answer 6

Have you tried the Gentoo Linux? You can install as least packages as you want, keeping the system really small.

For my personal experience, I have an old machine, Intel Core2, no VT support, 4GB memory. I installed Windows XP with SP3, and Windows 7 on the vbox, and they worked very well, including the guest plug-in.

Answer 7

I use VirtualBox on a Ubuntu host (desktop with GUI), with XP as guest. Most of the time I run Adobe CS4 programs like Photoshop and Flash. The desktop is an 18month old standard (cheap) machine, 3GB ram. I can do whatever I like, having Firefox and Eclipse open on the host, Photoshop and Illustrator open on the guest. It works almost like on a normal XP machine. Sometimes a javascript in Firefox stalls the machine, but that's about it.

What I want to say: I think it doesn't matter that much if the host is the smallest and leanest possible distro. (Unless performance is critical of course, but I don't see that in your question.)

It's probably better to configure the guest Windows OS to disable certain services that are not needed. I think this will be an easier win, although you can do both of course.