Virtual Server
Glen Merrick
gmerrick at chebucto.ns.ca
Mon Jun 8 01:08:07 UTC 2009
Personally, I would suggest using a server box that supports wax out
of the box. If you have existing configured windows test boxes, you
can easily convert them into VM's by using vmware ace.
You can also download from vmware preconfigured VM's for other OS's.
From there you configure your wax server to load whatever vm's you
want.
As well, there are vmware professionals in your community that can
help you
Regards,
glen Merrick
On 7-Jun-09, at 8:00 AM, ubuntu-ca-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS (R. Wood)
> 2. Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS (Victor Mendon?a)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 00:57:51 -0400
> From: "R. Wood" <rw at ncf.ca>
> Subject: Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS
> To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID: <20090607045751.GA31383 at ncf.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; x-action=pgp-signed
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>
> No, go with Debian :P =)
>
> Allegedly, on Sat, Jun 06, 2009 at 09:42:41PM -0700, Adam De Kroon
> stated:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I use Virtual Box on Windows to run other OS's and i personally
>> love it and think i a great product.
>>
>> I have not used all your OS options but know much about them from
>> study.
>> I'd use 1 of the following: CentOS, OpenSuse or Ubuntu.
>> Solaris (including OpenSolaris) are not Linux distro's but are Unix
>> OS's.
>> I'd say go with OpenSuse, i've heard it's real good. :)
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> Subject: Virtual Server Solution and OS
>> From: victorbrca at yahoo.ca
>> To: ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com
>> Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 12:15:10 -0400
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Greetings!
>>
>>
>>
>> I will be implementing a virtual sever solution at work and I'm
>> trying to get as many facts as possible for the best setup.
>>
>>
>>
>> We want to setup a server at our support department to host a
>> minimum of 8x Windows machines running simultaneously (ranging from
>> XP up, including server, 32 and 64-bit). Some of these machines
>> might run MSSQL which will increase the overhead, however they will
>> be used for testing and bug replication only, so there is no need
>> for them to be lightning fast.
>>
>>
>>
>> The department could grow and the number of virtual machines might
>> increase in the future (let's say 3x additional machines).
>>
>>
>>
>> There's also a need for backup, user management and remote
>> management. Costs need to be kept as low as possible, while still
>> providing a good and acceptable performance. Also, the company does
>> not have a formal Linux guy, so they might need to outsource
>> support if I ever leave the company.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've been doing some research on the following OS's and Virtual
>> Server solutions, including cost, support, usability and other
>> aspects:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> => OS
>>
>> -CentOS
>>
>> -Ubuntu
>>
>> -Suse
>>
>> -Open Suse
>>
>> -Open Solaris
>>
>>
>>
>> => Virtual Severs
>>
>> -Vmware Server
>>
>> -Vmware ESXi
>>
>> -VirtualBox
>>
>> -Xen
>>
>> -KVM
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> My choices are going for VMware ESXi and either CentOS or OpenSuse
>> (even thou I'm an Ubuntu guy).
>>
>>
>>
>> Any ideas and/or comments are very welcome!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Victor Mendon?a
>> http://wazem.org
>>
>> ,____________,
>> .' '.
>> /~~~~^~~~^~^~~~\
>> / _ /|| \
>> ; ( } \||D ;
>> | | /\__,=[_] |
>> ; ( |_\_ |---| ;
>> \ )| |/ | | /
>> '. | /_ | |.'
>> '------------'
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:40:49 -0400
> From: Victor Mendon?a <victorbrca at yahoo.ca>
> Subject: Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS
> To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID: <1244356850.4907.35.camel at voyager>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> wow.. I'm impressed that the machines are running on a 4GB desktop.
>
> I run VMware Server on a machine at home with 4GB RAM and an Intel
> Quadcore. I have 7x machines, 3x running 24/7. All machines except one
> are Linux and I see no performance issues with it. One of them hosts
> my
> website/blog/mail, and the other is strictly for a captive portal at
> home.
>
> For this project I was thinking of going with an acceptable level of
> performance. The fact that all guest machines will be Windows just
> makes
> it worse. I was aiming at a machine with double dual core CPU and at
> least 16GB of RAM.
>
>
> Victor Mendon?a
> http://wazem.org/
>
> ,____________,
> .' '.
> /~~~~^~~~^~^~~~\
> / _ /|| \
> ; ( } \||D ;
> | | /\__,=[_] |
> ; ( |_\_ |---| ;
> \ )| |/ | | /
> '. | /_ | |.'
> '------------'
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Mathenge <mathenge at gmail.com>
> Reply-to: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community
> <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
> To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Subject: Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS
> Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 16:52:25 -0400
>
> We use ESX 3.5 at work. When you purchase ESX you also get licenses
> for ESXi so we also have ESXi running. We have about 30 VMs on the ESX
> side and 15 on ESXi. The only difference I see between the two is that
> on ESX we have CLI access and are able to install Linux apps in the
> service console. ESXi doesn't have a service console but you really
> don't need it. The VI client does everything you need it to do to
> manage your VMs.
>
> In addition, ESXi boots much faster.
>
> Most of our Linux based VMs are CentOS. VMware has great support for
> it. VMware also has great support for Ubuntu so you're good to go
> whichever way you choose. I have no experience with Open Suse but I
> would definitely keep away from Open Solaris. Even though we've
> installed it on ESXi, I just find that CentOS performs much better
> since what we normally use our Linux machines for is Web applications,
> network monitoring, backup via SAMBA shares. Our network is a Windows
> 2003 Active Directory domain. Our CentOS machines are part of the
> domain and fit in quite nicely. Configuring them is very easy.
>
> For our ESXi setup, we've installed ESXi on a couple of 4GB desktops
> (that's right) with SATA drives. These are duo P4's with 2 cores each
> at 2 GHz. The VMs are on a SAN that's built using OpenFiler. The
> performance is good since this is mostly a test/development
> environment. There are one or two production machines on it that will
> be migrated to the ESX platform. Migration this way is a piece of
> cake. Shut down the VM, copy the files, start them up in the new
> environment.
>
> I've tested Virtualbox but in the end we had to admit that management
> tools in VMware were much better. The platform just "seemed" much more
> stable.
>
> Andrew
>
> 2009/6/6 Victor Mendon?a <victorbrca at yahoo.ca>:
>> Hi Jonathan, thanks for the reply.
>>
>> I'm aware that ESXi is a bare-metal solution, but I thought I'd
>> include
>> which OS I was leaning to in case I do decide for another Virtual
>> Solution other than ESXi.
>>
>> I think VirtualBox is a great desktop app as it stands right now,
>> but it
>> still lacks the needs for an enterprise environment. Correct if I'm
>> wrong, but VirtualBox still does not have a remote management
>> interface
>> (other than cli) and user roles, which will be important for us.
>>
>> It seems that the environment that you had was very similar to what I
>> need (in regards to systems performance needs). Did you think that
>> with
>> the hardware you were using most machines ran properly, or was there
>> still some room/need for performance boost?
>>
>>
>> Victor Mendon?a
>> http://wazem.org/
>>
>> ,____________,
>> .' '.
>> /~~~~^~~~^~^~~~\
>> / _ /|| \
>> ; ( } \||D ;
>> | | /\__,=[_] |
>> ; ( |_\_ |---| ;
>> \ )| |/ | | /
>> '. | /_ | |.'
>> '------------'
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jonathan Mason <jonathan.mason at gmx.net>
>> Reply-to: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community
>> <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
>> To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
>> Subject: Re: Virtual Server Solution and OS
>> Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:08:36 -0400
>>
>> Victor Mendon?a wrote:
>>> Greetings!
>>>
>>> I will be implementing a virtual sever solution at work and I'm
>>> trying
>>> to get as many facts as possible for the best setup.
>>>
>>> We want to setup a server at our support department to host a
>>> minimum
>>> of 8x Windows machines running simultaneously (ranging from XP up,
>>> including server, 32 and 64-bit). Some of these machines might run
>>> MSSQL which will increase the overhead, however they will be used
>>> for
>>> testing and bug replication only, so there is no need for them to be
>>> lightning fast.
>>>
>>> The department could grow and the number of virtual machines might
>>> increase in the future (let's say 3x additional machines).
>>>
>>> There's also a need for backup, user management and remote
>>> management.
>>> Costs need to be kept as low as possible, while still providing a
>>> good
>>> and acceptable performance. Also, the company does not have a formal
>>> Linux guy, so they might need to outsource support if I ever leave
>>> the
>>> company.
>>>
>>> I've been doing some research on the following OS's and Virtual
>>> Server
>>> solutions, including cost, support, usability and other aspects:
>>>
>>>
>>> => OS
>>> -CentOS
>>> -Ubuntu
>>> -Suse
>>> -Open Suse
>>> -Open Solaris
>>>
>>> => Virtual Severs
>>> -Vmware Server
>>> -Vmware ESXi
>>> -VirtualBox
>>> -Xen
>>> -KVM
>>>
>>>
>>> My choices are going for VMware ESXi and either CentOS or OpenSuse
>>> (even thou I'm an Ubuntu guy).
>>>
>>> Any ideas and/or comments are very welcome!
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Victor Mendon?a
>>> http://wazem.org
>>>
>>> ,____________,
>>> .' '.
>>> /~~~~^~~~^~^~~~\
>>> / _ /|| \
>>> ; ( } \||D ;
>>> | | /\__,=[_] |
>>> ; ( |_\_ |---| ;
>>> \ )| |/ | | /
>>> '. | /_ | |.'
>>> '------------'
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> If you're going with VMware ESXi then you won't be needing a host OS.
>> From what I understand ESX is a bare-metal solution, it IS the host
>> OS.
>>
>> When I was doing some sysadmin stuff for a small software company I
>> tried migrating their VM server from Win2K3 with VMware server to
>> CentOS
>> + VMware server but unfortunately the switch over didn't work, there
>> were huge problems with very slow IO. I would probably recommend
>> ESXi,
>> since it was designed from the ground up for virtualization I would
>> think it is the best performance wise. Also third-party support is
>> probably going to be easiest with VMware. The problem with VMware
>> ESX is
>> probably going to be hardware though, when I was looking into
>> virtualization with VMware ESX their HCL was quite narrow and didn't
>> provide support for any SATA controllers, the only options were
>> SCSI and
>> iSCSI.
>>
>> To provide a bit of background the VM server I was trying to
>> transition
>> was running 4 - 7 Win2K3 VMs, 2 CentOS VMs and 1 or 2 XP VMs on a
>> dual
>> opteron dual-core machine (4x 1.83GHz), 8GB ECC DDR2 with a HighPoint
>> RocketRAID controller set-up in a raid-5 array. These VMs were
>> configured as build servers and test environments along with the
>> main MS
>> SQL 2005 server for the company. There would be at least 6 VMs
>> running
>> at all times and then additional VMs would be started on demand. I
>> hypothesized that the scalability problem we had was with
>> fragmentation
>> with the original VMs being created as single-files which would
>> grow as
>> required on ext3. If you go with a linux host OS I would recommend
>> going
>> with ext4 if possible because the bottleneck in any VM server is
>> probably going to be IO. Preallocation of the file systems would
>> probably improve performance.
>>
>> I've been using VirtualBox for the past couple years on my laptop to
>> virtualize Windows XP for my university work, it is also a great tool
>> but I don't know how well it might scale for a server configuration.
>> When I was running 3 or 4 VMs I was quickly exhausting my 2GB of
>> ram and
>> even with VT-enabled the performance on my Core2Duo T7200 was quite
>> slow. I would definitely recommend it as a good alternative to VMware
>> workstation but I would recommend a lot of testing before trying to
>> roll
>> it out in a server.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
>>
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>> ubuntu-ca mailing list
>> ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-ca
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