Suppose, I installed win7 vm in vbox.So what will happen if I try to install another vm in win7 ( which is itself a vm) say, windows or linux machine.Will it work?
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Yes, it's possible. However, depending on hypervisor, there might be some nuances. Which one are you planning to use?– batistuta09Aug 1, 2017 at 18:23
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Since I am familiar with Virtual box.So I am gonna use it– dayaAug 2, 2017 at 3:33
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3 Answers
While it might be a fun experiment, it's seems like something impractical to do if you're actually going to use the nested VM. Here is a fun article to read about someone who as already tried it. Surprisingly, it wasn't the RAM or CPU that finally ruined the performance of the nested VM's but instead it was VT-x not being able to handle all of the virtualization.
I'd say implementing the nested VM's would really bit hit or miss, depending on which virtualization software you use. The OS may have a factor too.
What you are trying to achieve is while not very usual not in the least exotic: It's called nested virtualization - all "grown-up" Hypervisors I know of support it, but I don't know about Virtual Box.
Of course performance is not going to be brilliant, as the virtualization overhead becomes bigger (there is only one set of virtualization hardware in your box!), but there are use-cases.
answered Aug 1, 2017 at 15:44
A virtual machine inside of a virtual machine is possible, however, you could also incur some problems. First of all, you have to enable VM nesting in your hypervisor (otherwise the entire endeavor is moot to begin with), need CPU passthrough (i. e. the hypervisor must pass the host CPU's VMX capabilities to the guest) and have to install a hypervisor plus supporting software in the appropriately configured virtual machine.
The only problem, things could easily go awry and cause your "super" VM to malfunction. This is the case when you are setting up KVM inside of a Xen VM, and although both the preparations of the Xen guest and installation of the guest OS under KVM has been successful, launching it for real causes the Xen VM to crash. You should therefore be prepared for issues of any kind.
