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Is it possible to install a bare-metal hypervisor on a computer and run VMs created using that on the same computer?

what I'm going to achieve is like Installing a VMware workstation on a Microsoft Windows 10 and then Install a Microsoft Windows 7 in it, but this way the CPU and RAM will be used for no reason in the host operation system. I need to install the bare-metal hyper visor on the hardware level and then Install VMs in it, all of them on the same PC.

Type1 and Type 2 Hypervisors

if it's possible please recommend me some suitable programs for this matter and if not please explain why it's not possible. thanks in advance

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Sounds like you want to have a bare-metal hypervisor running, and let one of its VMs have control of the physical screen, mouse, and keyboard of that same system.

  • ESX doesn't do this. The best you can do is probably get to a maintenance shell which is not meant for everyday use.

  • Hyper-V does this.

  • You might be able to manually set up a Xen-based system to do this, but things like Xenserver, etc. are setup to run like ESX.

As far as why, keep in mind ESX and such are enterprise products.

  • IT support/people already remote into servers, therefore they will be remoting into the VMs as well. No one is typically at a datacenter working from a local console. Providing a console/display at the local system is not a priority and would only be done if a severe problem arose.

  • Businesses are interested in virtualization for the purpose mostly of moving physical systems to VMs - in order to reduce hardware costs. So ESX and such want to be as thin as possible to keep overhead as low as possible, to support hosting many systems at once.

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  • Thanks for the explanation, I will go for the Hyper-V server then and I hope I be able to install and use the VM installed in it on the same PC. by the way, is it really cost effective to use virtualization instead of normal computers? well, to virtualize everything using something like VMware products we need a server to use for vSphere, another powerful server to use for vCenter and yet each client need its own display/mouse/keyboard etc. I've been calculating the costs but couldn't figure out how it is cost effective. could you explain a lil bit about it ?
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:59
  • If you only have a couple of servers, probably not, but if you have many it is. Our company had separate physical servers at one time for email, software licensing, domain controllers, ERP software, SQL, VPN server, and more, and we were able to move that all to two physical boxes with less power consumption and rackspace used. We also can spin up or remove servers easily when needed, and disaster recovery is easier since the drives are virtual as well. It has a lot of benefits.
    – LawrenceC
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 15:05
  • Yeah in that case It's probably cost effective or even fail-safe.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 15:10
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You can do this with some limitations using ESXi. What you want is to assign specific hardware of the host to specific VM's for exclusive use. In particular, you will want GPU and USB controller passthrough. The limitations are in that you can't share hardware (with VM's running) and that you can, for example, only pass through certain GPU's via ESXi.

Check out this article for a similar setup and more specifics: Multi-headed VMWare Gaming Setup

enter image description here

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Actually the two type are no longer really distinctive these days:

However, the distinction between these two types is not necessarily clear. Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and FreeBSD's bhyve are kernel modules that effectively convert the host operating system to a type-1 hypervisor. Nevertheless, since Linux distributions and FreeBSD are still general-purpose operating systems, with other applications competing for VM resources, KVM and bhyve can also be categorized as type-2 hypervisors.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor)

This is pretty much the same case for Hyper-V, which is available in the Windows 10 Pro or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V#Architecture

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    Thanks for the information, very useful. but I haven't still got the answer. is what I'm trying to do achievable?
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:19
  • If you mean you want a hypervisor that has a type-1 architecture/performance while you can you use the host for daily usage (instead of just a panel-ish environment for you to manage the VMs), then Hyper-V is your (only) choice in Windows. However it is not available on Home versions of Windows.
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:23
  • Oh okay, could you please point me to the web page where I can get the Hyper-V bootable file (ISO file maybe?) which as you said is a Hyper-V server which runs as Hypervisor type-1 bare-metal.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:30
  • By the way yes that's right, I want to install the type-1 bare-metal hypervisor on a PC (host) and use the same PC to interact and use VMs (guests) installed in it. I have Windows 10 pro.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:33
  • I didn't mean Hyper-V server, coz that's probably not what you want. I mean the Hyper-V feature that you can "enable" in Windows Pro. Go to Program and Features in Control Panel and click Turn Windows features on or off on the left, then look for Hyper-V.
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:33
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Yes, that is possible. In fact that's why it is called "bare metal". This type of hypervisor has a tiny resource footprint and direct access to the hardware. Type 2 runs on a "normal" OS like Windows Server which has the disadvantage of more overhead (from the host OS). VMWare Workstation (or VirtualBox or QUEMU) would be Type 2. You are looking for VMWare ESXi (or XenServer or ...).

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  • Yes, I've already worked with VMware ESXI or vSphere but in these products you have to Install the ESXI on one PC and the vSphere client or the Virtual Machine on another PC, I'm looking for a software to run both of them on the same PC.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:02
  • Well, that's not true. You install ESXi and this Hypervisor will give a VM running from it their resources like RAM and CPU. You can then use a shared storage to place the VM physically to another location but it will still get RAM, CPU and Network from the ESXi Server it is run from. This also works without shared storage and you can use the internal HDDs from your ESXi.
    – duenni
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:05
  • I understand, but can all of these be done on the same PC? if you run the ESXI server on the PC then how can you use the VM created in the hypervisor on the same PC? supposing that I've installed ESXI server on my PC and I used another laptop to create a VM in it, now I put the laptop aside and I want to use the VM created in the ESXI server on that PC. how can I do this? like the client and server be the same PC.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:15
  • Ok, I see. The Hypervisor has no managing capabilities (hence the low footprint). But your VM has a network interface and can be accessed with RDP, VNC and the like. You could even run a VM and install the vCenter on this VM running from this ESXi.
    – duenni
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:21
  • Yes but vCenter required too much resources which is not efficient in my case. if I wanted to run 100VMs on a server then vCenter would come in handy but for 1 or 2 VMs vCenter is totally useless. but unfortunately vSphere 6 ues web console instead of client software and in order to run the web console we need the vCenter. so I'm somehow stuck in here.
    – Sam
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 14:27

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