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Now before you mark this as a duplicate or jump to answer "Just use VirtualBox", this is a different use case.

I am looking to simultaneously run two operating systems on my hardware, so that the booting and shutting down of one does not affect the other. I intend to have the Linux OS running headless and to only access it through SSH, but have Windows be the OS that appears to be running on the computer and using the display etc.

I have 16GB of memory and a 6 core CPU, so I could reasonably donate a few GB of memory and 2 cores to Linux.

I'm figuring it would work with both operating systems being virtualised and just giving Windows access to the GPU to which my monitor is connected. However, I have no idea how to do that. I figure it would require a special OS to handle running it, but I don't know of anything like that off of the top of my head.

Ideally a free solution is best, but if there are any relatively cheap solutions available, I wouldn't be against paying.

JamEngulfer
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3 Answers3

5

Sounds like you need a bare-metal hypervisor.

As opposed to hosted hypervisors (such as VirtualBox), with bare-metal hypervisors there is no OS that the hypervisor runs in. Instead, it runs directly on hardware consuming minimal amount of resources and only lets you run virtual machines. This image (from Wikipedia) shows the difference:

Hypervisor type differences

These types of hypervisors aren't that common in consumer applications. To name just two of possible options, take a look at VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V.

gronostaj
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4

You're looking for a bare metal hypervisor like gronostaj said, but instead of ESXi, i would recommend you Unraid. The main difference is probably that you have to buy a somewhat expencive license for gpu forwarding with ESXi whereas a 59$ unraid license includes pretty much all features but is limited to 6 hard drives.

Although one thing has to be said, both solutions are relatively difficult to configure when it comes to PCIe forwarding.

Yamakaja
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1

I chose to run Linux primarily and dedicate a VGA connector to it, while passing through the additional graphics card to the VM. Described here (superuser.SE) and here (Multiheaded NVIDIA Gaming). It should work but I haven't worked on it enough to say for sure.

Community
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Law29
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