DaDesktop Nested Virtualization Compatibility

Nested virtualisation can be a bit of a challenge to get running smoothly, even under ideal conditions. Below, we've listed our recommendations for which virtualisation tools work—or perform best—within each environment inside DaDesktop.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. Keep in mind that some tools aren't available on every operating system, like Virt Manager.

You can also find more details about using Virt Manager to set up multiple sandboxed servers and/or desktops.
 

		Intel CPU		AMD CPU
		KVM	LXC	KVM	LXC
Virt-Manager	Windows	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
	Linux	√	√	√	√
VirtualBox	Windows	√	N/A	X④	N/A
	Linux	√	√①②	X④	√①②
VMware Workstation	Windows	√①	N/A	√	N/A
	Linux	√①	X	√	X

 

Test environment:

Intel CPU Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2673 v3 @ 2.40GHz

AMD CPU Model: AMD EPYC 7502P 32-Core Processor

Window: Windows 10

Linux: Ubuntu 20.04

Virtualbox: 6.1.18

VMware Workstation: 16 Pro, v16.1.1

Comments:

①: Intel VT-X & AMD virtualisation acceleration in the guest is not supported. You must uncheck the "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" option under hardware processors.

②: The version of VirtualBox on the guest must match the version of VirtualBox DKMS on the host.

③: Running VirtualBox inside an LXC container clashes with active KVM virtual machines, so you'll need to shut down all KVM instances on the host first.

④: We ran into a soft lockup systemd-udevd error, making things slow and causing it to freeze up.