Windows 10: How to deal with the WSL2 and VMware/VBox situation?

Hello,

I've recently tried build 19041 on my main PC, mainly for the speed gain of WSL2, but since I still like to use some virtual machines I quickly noticed that using VMware or even VBox isnt really working out when WSL2/Hyper-V is enabled - Even the version 6.1 of VBox is a no-no for me (Installing Windows on it alone took like almost 90minutes...).

So I had to revert back to 1909, but since 20H1 is dropping soon for everyone I'm a bit worried and I'm trying to find a good deal. I still would love to use WSL2 but I also want to be able to install some virtual machines, mainly for testing out tools and malware analysis.

Can you guys recommend me a good way to have the best of both worlds?

Thank you!

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:)

 

HYPER-V and VMWare / VBOX concurrently

Hi Windows Gurus

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why Windows can't run VMWare and HYPER-V concurrently while VBOX seems to get indeterminate results -- some say it works others say it just hangs.

I've messed around quite a lot with the QEMU/KVM equivalent Hypervisor and it has absolutely NO problem running Guests on VBOX, VMware, and HYPER-V (2nd level VM --very slow though !!) all concurrently as well as VM's on its own platform. OK if you do this you can only passthru hardware to specific VM's - but the normal paravirtualisation works so VM's will run concurrently.

Linux kernel --5.4.13

Here's two W10 VMs running on KVM/QEMU and VMWare concurrently - no problems at all.





So this must surely be a Windows issue rather than a VMware or Oracle (VBOX) problem -- I know VMWare is working to get this resolved in a new release -- that means though yet more expense !!! to something that already works on another platform.

I wish Windows developers would concentrate more on these sorts of issues rather than messing about worrying what new icons look like and things like that.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Vmware or virtualbox?


Hi there

BMW / Audi / Mercedes. Take your choice.

My own view is that VMware is far more robust - but I haven't really messed around with VBOX. Why not try both -- Installing W10 twice is no big deal and there are also converters around to convert from one vm system to another one. Uninstall VMware tools / vbox additions on your GUEST systems before switching vm systems though. There's no reason why you can't have vbox and VMware installed.

Note both these products don't run when HYPER-V is enabled. Similarly HYPER-V won't work unless you uninstall both VMware and Vbox.

Cheers
jimbo

 

HYPER-V and VMWare / VBOX concurrently

The reason VBox works with Hyper-V role enabled is because they changed their program to make use of the Windows Hypervisor Platform API released in 1809. When VT-x is unavailable VBox will try to fallback to use the Hyper-V framework (a.k.a. NEM or Native Execution Manager). See VirtualBox 6.0 and Hyper-V

Android Emulator has also been updated to use this but apparently VMWare hasn't yet although according to this blog they are developing it.

Comparing Hyper-V with KVM is difficult as they work differently. Whether it is a type 1 or type 2 (or even if such a distinction makes sense any more) is debatable. See Is KVM a type 1 or type 2 hypervisor?