With no need to run a Windows infrastructure at home these days, recently, I began to plan to move from a Windows Server at home to a Linux-based machine for basic services like DNS, DHCP and TFTP.  Initially, I plan to build a virtual machine before switching back to native configuration when I’m happy that all is working as it should be.

The target hardware is the “low-power” server that I built a few years ago, based on an Intel Atom 330 dual core CPU. Whilst this does provide 64-bit processing capabilities, it lacks VT-x so is unsuitable for Hyper-V.  Consequently I installed Oracle Virtual Box as a free type 2 hypervisor and began to install an Ubuntu Server (12.04 LTS) virtual machine.  This failed, complaining that the underlying architecture was i586 and that the 64-bit image I was using needed an i686 CPU.

According to a post on the Ubuntu forums, to run a 64-bit guest in Virtual  Box, I need to enable Intel VT-x (or AMD-V). As that’s not an option for me, I had to revert to 32-bit build but it’s something useful to remind myself of as my virtualisation knowledge is a little rusty these days…