PD9 terminates VMs when VirtualBox is running; PD8 ran concurrently with VirtualBox

[pchandra]

Sorry for cross-posting, but this seems like the more appropriate sub-forum. Moderators, feel free to close my other thread

I understand that running multiple hypervisors concurrrently can lead to problems. However, I have already determined it is safe to run VirtualBox VMs concurrently with Parallels Desktop 8 VMs, so long as I run:

"VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --hwvirtexexcl off"

to disable VBox's exclusive use of the hardware virtualization extensions. That, along with using VBox 4.2.12 (not the latest), enables me to run the two hypervisors side-by-side.

I just upgraded to PD9 and I see that it actively detects when VirtualBox is running and forces any PD9 VMs to shut down. How can I override this to get back to the older PD8 behavior? I also want to note that VMware Fusion 5 runs concurrently with VirtualBox VMs; no workarounds needed, so it does seem possible.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[Matt Stratton]

This is totally a hack, though. I depend heavily on the use of vbox with vagrant for building and configuring infrastructure configurations. I don't believe that Parallels runs in such an unprofessional manner. I'm in the process of downloading Fusion to see if it plays nicer with vagrant/vbox. I have to believe it does, as vagrant supports vmware in the first place.

Paralllels, if you want to be used by professionals other PHB's who need to run their IE apps, you know, like real developers using Macs, you might want to support the professional developer toolchains that exist out there.

 

[ParagC]

It is definitely a hack - I didn't mean to imply otherwise. And as I mentioned in my previous post, VMware Fusion does run concurrently with VirtualBox machines, without any workarounds needed. As another data point, after upgrading to Mavericks, the workaround "VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --hwvirtexexcl off" again works for PD9. So this usage scenario is highly dependent on changes to the kernel.