unicornucopious

I'm on the hunt for a good virtualization setup. Really, I just want my primary machine to be able to run at least 3 VM's at once. This is for exploratory purposes. I can use the lab to learn about:

• Load balancing
• Samba as Primary Domain Controller
• Proxy servers
• General try-before-I-buy software evaluation, keeping primary machine clean

Has anyone else out there explored this? What works for you?

Requirements:

• Low memory footprint (256-512 MB) - I want at least three VM's running on a 2GB box.
• Low disk footprint (IGB image)
• Working setup without too much configuration (network comes up, drivers found, etc)
• X is optional - I'm fine with CLI and would prefer the low overhead.

QEMU is the platform of choice, even though I can't get kqemu working. It appears that Intel's virtualization features (I don't have this) is required for kqemu, although QEMU's documentation doesn't sqy this specifically.

As much as I like Gentoo, compiling everything under a very CPU-bound QEMU sounds painful. Also, lots of disk space is required, although I could mitigate this by having all VM's mount a shared /usr.

Running standard desktop distros is painful - Ubuntu's live CD is barely usable after it boots in this environment. Puppy and Damn Small perform reasonably, although one (I forget which) doesn't find the network.

If you have a good working setup for this kind of thing, please shoot me an e-mail (comments not working right now).