vmbuilder is a tool (introduced on Ubuntu 8.10) that allows you to build virtual machines (with Ubuntu as the OS) for multiple virtualization techniques. Currently it supports Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, and VMware Server. You can afterwards copy the virtual machines to another system (a Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, or VMware Server host) and run them there.

This guide explains how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an Ubuntu 8.10 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.

Vtonf is a free web-based control panel (released under the GPL license) for managing virtual private servers (VPS) based on OpenVZ. It makes it very easy to create and manage OpenVZ VMs even for people with little technical knowledge. Right now, Vtonf is available only for RedHat, Fedora, and CentOS (support for Debian is planned), therefore I describe its installation and usage on a CentOS 5.2 server.

In this HowTo I will describe how to prepare an Ubuntu 8.10 server for OpenVZ. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on a CentOS 5.2 system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called virtual machines or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

This Howto covers the installation of XenServer Express 5.0.0 and the creation of virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. XenServer Express is the free virtualization platform from Citrix, the company behind the well known Xen virtualization engine. XenServer Express makes it easy to create, run and manage Xen virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. The XenServer Express installation CD contains a full Linux distribution which is customized to run XenServer Express.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install VMware Server 2 on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems (virtual machines) such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free).

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0 on a headless Ubuntu 8.04 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

This tutorial shows how you can install Sun xVM VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. With VirtualBox you can create and run guest operating systems (virtual machines) such as Linux and Windows under a host operating system. There are two ways of installing VirtualBox: from precompiled binaries that are available for some distributions and come under the PUEL license, and from the sources that are released under the GPL. This article will show how to set up VirtualBox 2.0.0 from the precompiled binaries.

In this HowTo I will describe how to prepare an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server for OpenVZ. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.