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I love my VIA C3 (Nehemiah) based server, but as far as I can tell it's very hard to find a virtualization solution that works on this processor, since it doesn't support the same instruction sets as Intel/AMD processors of the time.

Are there any options at all?

fixer1234
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oKtosiTe
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    C3, Mini-ITX "server". hehehe. :) What OS's are involved (host/guest)? What are you trying to virtualize? - Also be warned, since that's an older chip (c.2001) with no virtualization technologies to speak (that I know of) of it's going to be Super-Slow for most VM configurations. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Mar 15 '11 at 13:23
  • Debian host & guest. It's mainly gonna host some PHP websites, and snapshots would help greatly. Hopefully processing will be less of a bottleneck than RAM and HD I/O, and they are covered fairly well. @techie007 – oKtosiTe Mar 15 '11 at 13:37

3 Answers3

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Apparently Virtualbox can.

From Virtualbox tips :

Q: Does Virtualbox require CPU with virtualization capabilities ?

A: NO. Virtualbox can even run on VIA C3 processors (on 486 linux kernel for instance).

harrymc
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You should be able to use pretty much any commercially available (desktop) virtualisation (e.g. non-hypervisor) program - Just do not expect anything fast!

Take a look at Virtualbox, Virtual PC, or VMWare Workstation

William Hilsum
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  • My worry is that the C3 might not even be a 686, but I could be confusing it with an old laptop I got around the same time. It's been quite some time since I installed anything new on this server. ;-) – oKtosiTe Mar 15 '11 at 13:33
  • You can't really compare..., it is x86 compatible and that is all that matters for virtualisation. – William Hilsum Mar 15 '11 at 13:36
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You certainly wouldn't be able to use anything that relied on VT-x or AMD-V, but I don't see why something like VirtualBox running inside Linux shouldn't operate.

Majenko
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