A VM inside a VM inside a VM - Nested Virtualized Explained!

A Virtual Machine (VM) is a great way to run a virtual PC (including its OS like Windows or Linux) as a application on your host PC. But did you know you can also run another VM inside the first one? A nested VM. In fact you can run another VM insides the first VM, inside the second VM!
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#garyexplains

[middleclasspoor]

I remember many years ago trying to create a VM inside another VM created with Virtualbox (if I recall correctly) and receiving a pop-up message saying "You just had to try it didn't you!" - needless to say it didn't work! I still get a kick out of that every time I recall

[gameplaysandtrackdays-gt]

EX VMware host and virtual machine specialist here! Would be happy to expand more on what Gary has explained here as to how nested Virtualization can literally allow you to run labs/prod websites(on a small scale though) provided you have the appropriate amount of CPU/vCPU cores and memory!

[esstx]

this thought arose in the middle of the night, now I can sleep. thx u

[DavidAspden]

Now, this is fun. And I used to think having a KVM and using remote desktops was a rat's nest, this is next level.

[tonysheerness]

Howto run in circles and disappear up your own back side. Well that is what would happen with me I would lose track of what machine I am in. Very interesting and very powerful.

[hyperprotagonist]

How deep does the rabbit hole go? Virtually deep.

[jurgenpfeifer]

Would be nice to have more insight into the current status and the planning on nested virtualization under MacOS on Apple Silicon.

[shaun]

Did you notice any speed impact going from one level to the next?

[captaindunsell]

Glad to see that 60 year old tech is now used in all techs… oh yea … 60 year old IBM mainframe tech… still being used today…

[nicnewdigate]

Reminds me of that movie, inception….

[iamstartower]

problem is having windows as the hypervisor... all security is compromised...

[DK-oxze]

Please do a video on how cloud providers architect their infra. And also popular services like serverless, edge, ec2, etc.

[JohnVella]

Can I make a little suggestion, in case you do any more virtual computer videos? Rather than opening Notepad and typing "This is a virtual desktop" you could try setting the desktop wallpaper with something like the windows version logo and some words, such as, I don't know, what about "This is a virtual desktop"!

Or even just a solid colour for each OS?

[bertnijhof]

I run Virtualbox since 2009 and I use nested Virtualization to keep an eye on Boxes and VirtManager. Ii is really slow on my Ryzen 3 2200G.

[simplestuffmatters]

As you went down the list of use cases for nested virtualisation, I couldn’t ‘help but wonder if all these could be met by just running VMs side-by-side. The only one motivation that struck a cord was application dependency on virtualisation features (other than a VM manager).
So for the most part I am with the fellow viewer who asked „Why?“

[Nilos]

Virtual Machine 3: The Virtual Machinening😄

[philosoaper]

back in the early 2000s I managed to boot 23 operating systems from 1 disk by stacking and nesting bootloaders...basically every windows version there was along with some OS/2 and BeOS and a pile of linux and unixes...utterly pointless but a "fun" challenge... that's what this video feels like

[thomaslechner]

If you do this with Linux systems instead Windows, you need not worry about licensing rigths as a bonus.

[janjansen]

Nested virtualisation is great but only if you you run it without a desktop environment, gpu offload is still missing, I’m using libvirt/kvm on my laptop and running a promox on my server

[insu_na]

And remember, kids: You can only virtualize Windows on Linux, which is why game publishers are making their games unplayable on Linux. 🙄
Good video! I use nested VMs all the time for testing cluster setups, it can be a load of fun.