I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
I'm only thinking of doing this because ESXi is free, and won't add any cost to this server.
This server is going to be a domain controller for 5 workstations which will run Windows XP, as well as host 1 website with email. It will setup a few shares for samba, and have one network printer attached to it.
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
Thanks.
I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
<snip> In fact, that's what I'm considering in a year or two, when I need a new h/d at home. I'd like to be able to test a new release without worrying, and I probably want something like XP or whatever (for the sole purpose of playing games more recent than, say, Doom (tm) or Heretic(tm) <g>)
mark
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Thom Paine painethom@gmail.com wrote:
I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
I'm only thinking of doing this because ESXi is free, and won't add any cost to this server.
This server is going to be a domain controller for 5 workstations which will run Windows XP, as well as host 1 website with email. It will setup a few shares for samba, and have one network printer attached to it.
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
There are many benefits to virtualizing. Except for a few laptops, everything in my house is virtualized with either ESXi, VMWare Server, Xen or KVM. Besides the flexibility, I like the ability to access the servers from whichever room I'm in. I can work in my office and when I want, just take the laptop outside or to kitchen and have all my apps still in place.
A domain controller for 5 systems seems particularly well suited for virtualization. The CPU/memory/disk requirements are relatively modest and you'd be able to take better advantage of your Poweredge system. Backups would be easier, as would managing the system since you'd have, in effect, an ILO setup.
On 2/5/2010 11:54 AM, Kwan Lowe wrote:
There are many benefits to virtualizing. Except for a few laptops, everything in my house is virtualized with either ESXi, VMWare Server, Xen or KVM. Besides the flexibility, I like the ability to access the servers from whichever room I'm in. I can work in my office and when I want, just take the laptop outside or to kitchen and have all my apps still in place.
I wouldn't use remote access as a reason to virtualize (other than during the initial setup or network troubleshooting). There are better ways to get remote access for daily use than a VMware console (freenx, vnc, ssh, remote X for linux, remote desktop, vnc for windows).
I have recently installed ESXi4 on a new HP DL380 G6 with 12GB of memory. I am running CentOS 5.4 and CentOS 4.8. A few things I have learned.
First, for best I/O performance you should use the Vmware Paravirtualized storage controller driver. It's a little bit of a hassle setting it up. You just have to remake the initrd file. This will give about 10% better disk I/O than using the other emulated controllers.
I am using in a dual development/operational environment on the same machine , which is nice. You can allocate resource pools, and control how much CPU, Memory each VM or VM pool gets.
I have noticed about a * 10-15% * overall performance hit running CentOS on the ESXi hypervisor compared to bare metal. If your applications are very CPU and/or I/O intensive then there will be a noticeable difference between bare metal and a hypervises solution. So the trade off is a performance hit vs the easy of features that come with a virtualized setting.
If you are going to run just one CentOS instance, on the VM, then I wouldn't think it would be that advantageous to have it on a VM for performance reasons.
If you do decide to go with ESXi, you might want to up your memory as you will probably want to run several VM's and memory get's eaten up pretty quickly.
-Mike
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Thom Paine Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 12:07 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: [CentOS] VMWare ESXi & CentOS5.4
I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
I'm only thinking of doing this because ESXi is free, and won't add any cost to this server.
This server is going to be a domain controller for 5 workstations which will run Windows XP, as well as host 1 website with email. It will setup a few shares for samba, and have one network printer attached to it.
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
Thanks.
On 2/5/2010 12:25 PM, Michael Dross wrote:
I have recently installed ESXi4 on a new HP DL380 G6 with 12GB of memory. I am running CentOS 5.4 and CentOS 4.8. A few things I have learned.
First, for best I/O performance you should use the Vmware Paravirtualized storage controller driver. It's a little bit of a hassle setting it up. You just have to remake the initrd file. This will give about 10% better disk I/O than using the other emulated controllers.
Does this happen by itself if you've installed vmware tools in the guest and then get a kernel update that triggers an initrd rebuild or do you have to do something to specify the right module to include?
Vmware tools installed the pvscsi library. But does not automatically reconfigure the boot/kernel to use it.
Here is a good web page that explains the steps to remake the initrd. Once you have done that under settings in the vSphere Client change the SCSI controller setting to Paravirtual. I think that the pvscsi lib will be included in a forth coming linux kernel tree, which will make having to add this manually, obsolete. Not sure when that will be. I wish VMware would automate this as part of the install or P2V process.
http://vmadmin.nt.com.au/?p=28
-Mike
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Les Mikesell Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 1:36 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] VMWare ESXi & CentOS5.4
On 2/5/2010 12:25 PM, Michael Dross wrote:
I have recently installed ESXi4 on a new HP DL380 G6 with 12GB of memory. I am running CentOS 5.4 and CentOS 4.8. A few things I have learned.
First, for best I/O performance you should use the Vmware Paravirtualized storage controller driver. It's a little bit of a hassle setting it up. You just have to remake the initrd file. This will give about 10% better disk I/O than using the other emulated controllers.
Does this happen by itself if you've installed vmware tools in the guest and then get a kernel update that triggers an initrd rebuild or do you have to do something to specify the right module to include?
Thom Paine wrote:
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
I like the VM approach because it gives a foolproof to snapshot the guest and do testing/rollbacks easily, also the hardware configuration is usually significantly simpler as it's abstracted, and it makes the server more portable, easier to move to another system as a whole.
Where performance is a real big concern I use native hardware, but those cases are fairly rare.
nate
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Thom Paine painethom@gmail.com wrote:
I have a brand new Dell Poweredge T310 server with 4G ram and 1TB raid-5 hard drive in it. I Really only need to be able to run a copy of CentOS 5.4 on it, but I'm wondering if in the build process should I stick on ESXi 4 and then run CentOS as a vm? This would give me the options to roll out other VM's if I want over the life of the server (which I likely won't need) but the convenience of having them might be there.
I'm only thinking of doing this because ESXi is free, and won't add any cost to this server.
This server is going to be a domain controller for 5 workstations which will run Windows XP, as well as host 1 website with email. It will setup a few shares for samba, and have one network printer attached to it.
Any thoughts to this, or should I just put on CentOS 5.4 and be done with it? I know it's like asking what everyone's favourite colour is, but maybe a few replies will give me some ideas.
Thanks.
-- -=/>Thom _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Just keep in mind your backup solution. You will not be able to use external USB hard drives for backups on ESXi. ESXi works great when you have more than one server. At one office I re purposed their older server for files and backups running Windows on bare metal. I then used ESXi on the newer machine with a few installs of windows for ad, exchange, and a centos webserver.
Ryan
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Kwan Lowe -
Les Mikesell -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Michael Dross -
nate -
Ryan Wagoner -
Thom Paine