I'll soon buy myself a nice server (something like the quad-cpu HP DL585) for personal use (home related stuff, data-mining projects, web server and some cron jobs), and I wonder how to separate all those tasks into dedicated environments.
I'm used to FreeBSD & Linux server administration and virtualization setups (Xen & VmWare), so virtualization came quite naturally. But as I plan to use FreeBSD, I can also use jails (I'm not interested in running any other OS than FreeBSD).
But I lack experience in FreeBSD jails, and never planned to use them before. So I'm looking for some experience return and perhaps for someone with experience in both domains who could advise me on which one would be best suited for my humble needs.
Best Answer
As long as you do not require a kernel different from the host system to be run in one of your guests, operating system virtualization will probably be the solution with the least amount of overhead.
Next to the kernel version restriction, you'll also find it impossible to access raw devices from within a jail, or to alter the network config from the inside. Since you have access to the host system, you can set that one up as you require, so this is not really an issue I guess.
From the description you give, I'd certainly recommend you to give jails a try.