Freeware hypervisors which do not require SLAT support

muchomurka · 23 Jun 2020

There are still many LGA775 computers in use; their Core2 Duo/Quad processors support VT-x but not SLAT/EPT which is required by several current free hypervisors. For reference, here is a list of recent versions which can run on hardware without SLAT support:

Vmware Workstation Player: 12.5.9 (not supported anymore but working without problems)
Vmware ESXi: 6.5 (end of support November 15, 2021)
Oracle Virtualbox: SLAT still is not a requirement in current version 6.1.10
Microsoft Hyper-V Server: 2012 R2 (end of support January 10, 2023)
...corrected, see post below.

Other ones can be added.

muchomurka · 28 Jun 2020

Reason of correction:
The Hyper-V - Wikipedia article says "Second Level Address Translation (in Windows Server 2012 and later)" as requirement so initially I tested & recommended version 2008 R2 only. However, the statement is wrong. As you can see, Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 is still fully functional on non-SLAT hardware (whereas Hyper-V Server 2016 isn't).

Freeware hypervisors which do not require SLAT support-hv12r2.png

Freeware hypervisors which do not require SLAT support-ww.png

jimbo45 · 29 Jun 2020

Some of these very old CPU's will work with VM's using KVM/QEMU

Other non-recommended x86 CPUs

The following CPUs models are compatible with most AMD and Intel x86 hosts, but their usage is discouraged, as they expose a very limited featureset, which prevents guests having optimal performance.

kvm32
kvm64
Common KVM processor (32 & 64 bit variants). Legacy models just for historical compatibility with ancient QEMU versions.
486
athlon
phenom
coreduo
core2duo
n270
pentium
pentium2
pentium3

Also Pentium IV (works fine on a Sony VAIO old laptop I have with Pentium IV processor).

Cheers
jimbo