[Opensim-users] OpenSim and Virtual Machines

[Dahlia Trimble]

I've used OpenSimulator in a variety of virtual machines, from KVM to
OpenVZ to VirtualBox to EC2. In general performance is less than when
running in bare hardware but everything usually works. I've seen some
issues with timer accuracy in some virtual machines in the past and had to
compile a custom linux kernel to get around it, but I think recent
virtualization technology has probably fixed this. Some technologies like
OpenVZ I found very difficult to work with in general and I prefer to stick
with the KVM style approach where the host OS kernel is set up to allow a
"closer to the metal" virtualization.

I think virtual machines are good for lower performance installations where
fewer avatars and scripts are expected. and bare metal should be used where
higher performance is needed.

Often hosting companies will oversell and you may get a lot less
performance than you would expect from their advertised specifications. If
performance is poor with one company, try others. The cheapest deal is
usually far from the best.


On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Justin Clark-Casey <
jjustincc at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I've seen OpenSimulator run under different virtual machines (Xen and
> EC2).  Back a few years ago, there was a very odd issue when using EC2
> where the simulator process wouldn't certain start context switching
> millions of times and freeze out all other processes, though that may have
> been a mono issue rather than EC2.
>
> Other than that, it appears to work just fine as long as you give it
> sufficient CPU resources, as is the case when running on bare metal.
>
>
> On 20/02/14 21:19, dogwomble at exemail.com.au wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> I wad wondering if anyone had much experience with running OpenSim under a
>> virtual machine? I'm interested in finding out what sort of performance
>> can be expected from running in that sort of environment and how far it
>> can be pushed without too many issues.
>>
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>>
>>
>
> --
> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
> OSVW Consulting
> http://justincc.org
> http://twitter.com/justincc
>
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