I am planning to set up a virtualization host to host a Linux workstation VM. It may also host a Windows VM down the road but not on the initial list. I'm looking for suggestions as far as:
- oVirt or CentOS? (Did I miss a CentOS equivalent of RHV somewhere?)
I'm not interested in running VMware. Is it easy to upgrade oVirt or is it disruptive to do so?
- Does anyone have real world experience running SPICE over a WAN with
VPN? I hear great things about SPICE .. but haven't heard much about how it performs over a WAN .. which in this case is the Internet with an SSL-based VPN.
I have plenty of Linux experience and am very comfortable with a command line and config files, but wouldn't mind a graphical interface for some of the virtualization components. I may expand to a second virtualization host at some point, but it is not in the initial plan.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks, Barry
Barry,
Using KVM isn't too bad - setting up a bridge is a little work but not hard. I got tired of manually configuring so I wrote some Anisble scripts to provision my hosts for KVM and virtualization. I do run Xen as my hypervisor on a Dell Precision 470 (paravirtualization using CentOS).
Running virt-manager to assist you with installing VMs from ISOs is not hard at all - but I'd recommend getting your bridge working first. For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora VMs I use Cobbler and KOAN to spin up my VMs as I hate doing so manually - but virt-manager works fine (and as an initial way to install VMs is great). For Windows VMs, I use virt-manager.
As far as spice, yeah works great. Most of my VMs run non-gui mode, but if I do need a desktop I happen to use tiger vnc. As for desktops, I used FVWM forever and moved to KDE. Now I am all about LXDE as its really lightweight (not as much as FVWM), but has just enough integration that emails and IRC messages get me some sound and balloon notifications. And a nice right click to get on the VPN. Alas it's supported on Fedora but I never got around to attempt a RHEL/CentOS build from source.
My home network runs all my VMs - some for work related stuff (software engineer not a sysadmin - but sometimes I play one in real life). At work I typically use RHEV.
I'm on my tablet of I'd share some links I have...happy to follow up with you if you want...
Sincerely,
Scot P. Floess
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