Windows 10: Best free (preferably open source) type 1 hypervisor

I'm planning to repurpose my old PC (AMD Athlon FX-8350, 32 GB of RAM, Geforce GTX 770) as a server. For the fileserver part my intention is to use FreeNAS. But since the machine would be fairly overpowered for that use case I thought of using a type 1 hypervisor which would leave me all options open for further use. I know the gold standard would be vSphere by VMWare but despite the fact that cheap licenses can be purchased on ebay and there is even a basic free version called vSphere Hypervisor I'd gladly go for something more open, preferably even open source and free. I know of KVM but the pure command line administration is not really my preferred user interface. Any other solutions? Maybe something you can recommend because you have used it yourself?

P.S. It's not that I cannot live with a command line interface, it's just that I prefer a decent GUI, it makes administration so much more comfortable.

:)

 

Hypervisor Type 1 and Type 2

Have you ever wondered what the difference between a type 1 and type 2 hypervisor is. This drawing shows the principle







Type 1 Hypervisors sit between the hardware and your virtual machines AND your Host OS.

In effect, your Host OS is turned into a virtual machine as well. Each Guest OS has direct access to the native hardware via interface built into the Hypervisor.


Type 2 Hypervisors sit between your virtual machines AND your Host OS.

The Guest OSs do not have direct access to Host hardware, and use emulated drivers.

There are pluses and minuses with each type:

In the domestic consumer market, the three main players are type 1 - Hyper-V (not for Home users), and type 2 (work with Home) - virtualbox (free version), VMware workstation (free version)

Hyper-V is really more geared to Windows virtual machines but will run alternative OSs but sound is typically not available. Biggest minus is it is not available to Home users.

VirtualBox and VMWare have more flexibility, but require more maintenance, particularly when a build upgrade = occasionally a build upgrade "breaks" the type 2 hypervisor.

Personally, I use Hyper-V as I use it for Insider builds, and my personal experience is it performs better than the type 2 alternatives, and less maintenance overhead. However, not so good for Linux etc.

Nobody can say one is better than the other - it really depends on what you are doing.


Note: Windows does not allow the two hypervisor types to coexist Fortunately, it is quite easy to create two boot entries - one which will start the type 1 Hyper-V hypervisor, and one which will suppress it starting so type 2 can be used instead.

I have no idea if you can run two type 1 hypervisors simultaneously but I suspect not?

 

Hypervisor Type 1 and Type 2

You are confusing the hypervisor with Hyper-V.

The hypervisor in type 1 sits under Windows (making windows a vm in effect).

Hyper-v is merely a program that sets up a vm guest. There are others Exsi etc.

They all use the same hypervisor.t is merely convenience to use the windows gui to set up other type 1vms e.g. a hyper-v vm.

 

Hypervisor Type 1 and Type 2

So a type 1 hypervisor requires a host OS. The computer will boot into the host operating system automatically. The guest operating systems can be configured to be running or not by turning them on or off once you are booted into the host OS.
Is my understanding correct? I'm trying to figure out why Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, but boots into my W10 just as it did before enabling it.

Will I see a performance decrease in any way by running games now that I have hyper-V enabled?