Free Hypervisors?

[l11h]

Hi,

 

I am looking for a free hypervisor for my school project. I have another topic up and found ESXi would do the job however, vSphere is a trial and won't last me until the end of my project. 

 

I have tried Proxmox and I really that hypervisor, does what I need but only one problem.

I can't seem to find any shell commands to create VM's whereas with ESXi I could. 

Or does anyone know how I can use the shell to create VM? Or even create it from a template that you create yourself? 

 

I was thinking if there is any hypervisors that are free also the client to access the hypervisor is free to use. If I was a business yes I would go for vSphere as it does what I need however, i'm not and will only need it for a few months lol. 

 

I heard about Hyper-V is that free? Can i run it off Windows 8? I got a copy of Windows 8 on my laptop so if I can use that to access Windows Hyper-V and it's not a trial? And also be able to create templates and create VM's using the shell. 

 

Any help will be appreciated  

 

P.S. For the people want to know my project it's simple:

I'll have 2 hypervisors at school connected up (for proxmox as i know this does it) and live migrate the machines without turning them off, just as an extra feature.

But this is what i'm going to concentrate on. 

 

Create a hypervisor at home as school's computers aren't really powerful lol. 

Simulate a VPS hosting company, so i'll have Ubuntu Server and maybe others. But to deploy these using templates (with vSphere i know u can through CLI, with Proxmox can't seem to find it, which is a problem)

And then Port Forward these, Using PfSense to do port forwarding, so it translates from e.g port 2222 to port 22, so I dont have to change the O/S it's in the firewall, This works but same problem can't seem to use CLI to do firewall rules, any other alternative? 

Once this is done I will then access that same machine using Putty from school. 

This will all be demonstrated to the lecturer. 

So I know his question will be, well why only use GUI for all this? Isn't it quicker to use CLI, or like most sites I guess they do this, when you choose package they send the commands to the server which creates the VPS using those settings u chose. 

Which is the main reason I want the command line option if available. 

 

Thanks for all your help in advanced. 

[rufee]

ESXi or now called vSphere is free you just have to register at VMwares site and you get a code, it only limits you at 32gb of ram if i recall.

[l11h]

ESXi or now called vSphere is free you just have to register at VMwares site and you get a code, it only limits you at 32gb of ram if i recall.

 

Yes I tried that but from my research I need vCenter to create templates, looked under every option in vSphere but only has a cloning option ... and it seems it's just not the same thing lol

[ZeanLee]

Hey doesn't win8 come with hyperV?

[Sheldon]

ESXi or now called vSphere is free you just have to register at VMwares site and you get a code, it only limits you at 32gb of ram if i recall.

They removed the RAM limit!

[DoubleY]

Hey doesn't win8 come with hyperV?

Yes, it does. 

 

[Sheldon]

Yes I tried that but from my research I need vCenter to create templates, looked under every option in vSphere but only has a cloning option ... and it seems it's just not the same thing lol

You will need the vCenter. I see your problem.

[l11h]

"qm create <vmid>" is the command to create and "qm config <vmid>" to configure.

 

so proxmox does have the feature to create VM's through the shell  

 

so the config option I can set options like how much RAM and CPU, the VLAN and all that right? 

 

Can we do something similar with templates, as with templates in Proxmox everything is similar u just create template and choose fully or cloned option, storage and name of vm.