Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options: - KVM; - VMWare Esxi; - VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
Thank You very much in advance :)
With regards, R.
2010/2/2 Rafał Radecki radecki.rafal@gmail.com:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
Thank You very much in advance :)
With regards, R. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
You can only install KVM or VMWare Workstation/Server in CentOS, I think you should try KVM, because it's opensource and it supports Windows but you need special hardware like the latest CPUs from AMD or Intel...
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, Victor Padro wrote:
You can only install KVM or VMWare Workstation/Server in CentOS, I think you should try KVM, because it's opensource and it supports Windows but you need special hardware like the latest CPUs from AMD or Intel...
just to clarify, you're saying that KVM requires H/W virtualization support, either VT-x or AMD-V, yes? because at this point, i don't think that really qualifies as "special hardware" anymore, it's pretty common.
rday --
======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.
Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ========================================================================
On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 07:05:59AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, Victor Padro wrote:
You can only install KVM or VMWare Workstation/Server in CentOS, I think you should try KVM, because it's opensource and it supports Windows but you need special hardware like the latest CPUs from AMD or Intel...
just to clarify, you're saying that KVM requires H/W virtualization support, either VT-x or AMD-V, yes? because at this point, i don't think that really qualifies as "special hardware" anymore, it's pretty common.
Definitely common, but also "special" from the perspective that lots of us still have plenty of older, yet serviceable hardware in our data centers (I'm thinking Dell PE 2850's here for example) that don't suport VT or AMD-V but still runs great for something like Xen.
Ray
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 6:05 AM, Robert P. J. Day rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote:
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, Victor Padro wrote:
You can only install KVM or VMWare Workstation/Server in CentOS, I think you should try KVM, because it's opensource and it supports Windows but you need special hardware like the latest CPUs from AMD or Intel...
just to clarify, you're saying that KVM requires H/W virtualization support, either VT-x or AMD-V, yes? because at this point, i don't think that really qualifies as "special hardware" anymore, it's pretty common.
rday
======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.
Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Not everyone has "common" hardware you know...there's still people running servers in Pentium 3/4 Xeons...
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:35 PM, Robert P. J. Day rpjday@crashcourse.cawrote:
just to clarify, you're saying that KVM requires H/W virtualization support, either VT-x or AMD-V, yes? because at this point, i don't think that really qualifies as "special hardware" anymore, it's pretty common.
Yes common on the newer hardware but beware some main boards may have b0rked BIOS that preclude the CPUs virtualization feature. On the server mother boards not an issue but on desktop/laptop it is possible.
-- Arun Khan
Rafał Radecki ha scritto:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
Thank You very much in advance :)
With regards, R.
I know it is off topic on this list (and I really wish it was based on CentOS), but I feel to recommend http://pve.proxmox.com/, because: It's really easy and fast to setup Supports KVM and OpenVz Can be clustered (central management and expandability) Supports LVM snapshots to backup KVM guest
I'm using on production, and for now I didn't had any trouble. The main "missing" feature is software raid, which isn't recommended nor supported for production, but can be achieved on test machines. But beware that with KVM you will almost certainly need a good HW raid with bbu cache. Also the development is very active and more functionalities are coming on each version (shared storage via drbd, and many other, I think that the wiki can cover this better)
HTH Regards, Lorenzo
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
What else are you going to run? VMware Esxi is probably the best if the windows guest(s) are the main priority. I think you need a windows box to run the vSphere client to manage it, though (but it is very nice, letting you do things like connect your client cd/dvd to the guest for installs, etc.) VMware server would be OK if the guest(s) are somewhat secondary and you also run some services directly on the host. It has the down side that whenever you update the host kernel you need to reboot the guests and run through the configuration step before they'll restart.
On 02/02/10 11:20, Rafał Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
Thank You very much in advance :)
With regards, R.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi, Personally, I'd recommend VMware Workstation. Always been good for me, however lately I have been trying out Virtualbox (PUEL) :-). They have an Open Source Edition also (Virtualbox), only it lacks USB Support. If you go on there website, you can see the 3 missing features.
Tried KVM, but it didn't like my box not having AMD-V.
I think the best way to determine what's best for you, would be to try them all, and see which you prefer :-)
Jake Shipton wrote:
Hi, Personally, I'd recommend VMware Workstation. Always been good for me, however lately I have been trying out Virtualbox (PUEL) :-). They have an Open Source Edition also (Virtualbox), only it lacks USB Support. If you go on there website, you can see the 3 missing features.
Tried KVM, but it didn't like my box not having AMD-V.
I think the best way to determine what's best for you, would be to try them all, and see which you prefer :-)
Agreed. Try them out and then determine what you like. My preference is VirtualBox for personal use, VMware Workstation for work use, and then all our enterprise work stuff runs on either VMware ESX for business critical installs, and ESXi for non-critical installs.
There is a work around for USB support on Linux for VirtualBox, where VMware works a bit better with USB.
They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
Regards, Max
On Tuesday 02 February 2010 11:08:21 Max Hetrick wrote:
There is a work around for USB support on Linux for VirtualBox, where VMware works a bit better with USB.
Odd, for some time I have had USB support with Sun's Virtualbox. It was a problem at some point but works fine here (Using Fedora 11). I'm pretty sure I watched a USB CAM on XP (as a VM client) a while ago.
Bobby
Bobby wrote:
Odd, for some time I have had USB support with Sun's Virtualbox. It was a problem at some point but works fine here (Using Fedora 11). I'm pretty sure I watched a USB CAM on XP (as a VM client) a while ago.
Well, it's supported and works, however, you have to remount usbfs and chmod a file or two, and then it works in VirtualBox. So it's more of a bug I guess than unsupported.
Max
On Tuesday 02 February 2010 11:51:43 Max Hetrick wrote:
Bobby wrote:
Odd, for some time I have had USB support with Sun's Virtualbox. It was a problem at some point but works fine here (Using Fedora 11). I'm pretty sure I watched a USB CAM on XP (as a VM client) a while ago.
Well, it's supported and works, however, you have to remount usbfs and chmod a file or two, and then it works in VirtualBox. So it's more of a bug I guess than unsupported.
Interesting. Would you mind sharing what files that is as I've never encountered it but would like to know more if/when I do? What version (of VB) are you using?
Bobby
Bobby wrote:
Interesting. Would you mind sharing what files that is as I've never encountered it but would like to know more if/when I do? What version (of VB) are you using?
I'm running the latest version: 3.1.2 build 56127.
I had to perform these steps to get USB to work on a Linux or Windows host.
Get your vboxusers group ID # cat /etc/group | vboxusers
Remount the USBFS with your vboxusers GID from the above step # mount -t usbfs -o remount,devgid=GID,devmode=664 /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
Change the permissions on /dev/vboxdrv # chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv
Restart the vboxdrv service # service vboxdrv restart
I can't remember if I had to add the device in VirtualBox under the USB menu or not, I'm thinking not.
Regards, Max
On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 11:51 -0500, Max Hetrick wrote:
Bobby wrote:
Odd, for some time I have had USB support with Sun's Virtualbox. It was a problem at some point but works fine here (Using Fedora 11). I'm pretty sure I watched a USB CAM on XP (as a VM client) a while ago.
Well, it's supported and works, however, you have to remount usbfs and chmod a file or two, and then it works in VirtualBox. So it's more of a bug I guess than unsupported.
Max
I'm using CentOS 5.4 x86_64 with KVM. Have created several Windows VMs. USB, CDROM, and virtual hard disks all work in it. Seems rock solid to me so far. The VMs and their xml descriptor files are easy to back up.
DaveM
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Any tips?
DaveM
David McGuffey wrote:
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
You could use sudo to call them.. But I don't really understand your concern, if your behind two pretty tight firewalls then there shouldn't be anything to worry about. Myself I just have one firewall(OpenBSD), no local firewall on my system(at home).
If your physically at the system(which I assume you are since your blocking network access while your not logged on), perhaps simply pulling the network cable out of the system is simplest.
nate
On Feb 3, 2010, at 9:36 PM, David McGuffey davidmcguffey@verizon.net wrote:
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Any tips?
Set iptables to block all inbound traffic unless initiated from your workstation.
It's the most secure, all the time.
-Ross
On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 09:19 -0500, Ross Walker wrote:
On Feb 3, 2010, at 9:36 PM, David McGuffey davidmcguffey@verizon.net wrote:
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Any tips?
Set iptables to block all inbound traffic unless initiated from your workstation.
It's the most secure, all the time.
-Ross
It is already set up that way...but I was thinking about taking the interface down if no one is logged into the console (this is a workstation used as a home computer and not supporting any network servers).
I was thinking of a cron job that would run 'who' and if there were no active logins, run 'ifdown eth0'
DaveM
On Feb 5, 2010, at 6:55 PM, David McGuffey davidmcguffey@verizon.net wrote:
On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 09:19 -0500, Ross Walker wrote:
On Feb 3, 2010, at 9:36 PM, David McGuffey davidmcguffey@verizon.net wrote:
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Any tips?
Set iptables to block all inbound traffic unless initiated from your workstation.
It's the most secure, all the time.
-Ross
It is already set up that way...but I was thinking about taking the interface down if no one is logged into the console (this is a workstation used as a home computer and not supporting any network servers).
I was thinking of a cron job that would run 'who' and if there were no active logins, run 'ifdown eth0'
Why?
That's overkill, if you really want to go that way, why not shutdown the PC when it's not being used, or see if you can make it go into 'sleep' mode which will turn off the network interfaces.
-Ross
David McGuffey wrote:
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Any tips?
$ shutdown -h now
If the machine is not doing anything, what is the point of leaving it on in the first place?
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 9:36 PM, David McGuffey davidmcguffey@verizon.net wrote:
I'm trying to reduce the attack surface to a home machine that is always on and connected to the Internet. It is running CentOS 5.4, with tight iptables rules and sits behind a Verizon FiOS firewall/switch also configured with tight rules.
I was wondering how to best block all network access to it when I log off...then unblock it when I log on. Changing iptables requires root access...as does running ifdown and ifup scripts.
I could change the permissions on ifdown and ifup and run them from the login/logout scripts, but I'd prefer not to do that.
Many window managers can run scripts on login and logout. You could create a script uses sudo to enable/disable the interface then run it on login/logout.
On Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:20 AM, David McGuffey wrote:
On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 11:51 -0500, Max Hetrick wrote:
Bobby wrote:
Odd, for some time I have had USB support with Sun's Virtualbox. It was a problem at some point but works fine here (Using Fedora 11). I'm pretty sure I watched a USB CAM on XP (as a VM client) a while ago.
Well, it's supported and works, however, you have to remount usbfs and chmod a file or two, and then it works in VirtualBox. So it's more of a bug I guess than unsupported.
Max
I'm using CentOS 5.4 x86_64 with KVM. Have created several Windows VMs. USB, CDROM, and virtual hard disks all work in it. Seems rock solid to me so far. The VMs and their xml descriptor files are easy to back up.
No doubt that all virtual hard disks work.
If you want good performance however, virtio disks are only supported on Vista based stuff like Vista, 7, 2008 with the virtio disk device driver installed.
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
I wouldn't use Vmware Server/Workstation for a production server, either. I found VMWare server 2.x quite unstable on a number of different configurations, and the performance is considerably lower than the native hypervisor style virtualization like ESX(i)
VMWare ESX(i), assuming your hardware is supported, works great. Rock solid, very good performance, excellent support for windows, linux, solaris, etc guests. VMware supports copy-on-write snapshots, too.
re backups, you do know Windows Server has its own snapshot feature for taking backups, known as VSS (Volume Snapshot Services) ?
do note, snapshots are an AID to backups, they aren't a substitute for proper offsite archived backups for emergency recovery. For instance, they won't protect against system hardware failure. Any, a volume with too many snapshots pending tends to bog down considerably in disk IO performance.
On 2/2/2010 10:43 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
I wouldn't use Vmware Server/Workstation for a production server, either. I found VMWare server 2.x quite unstable on a number of different configurations, and the performance is considerably lower than the native hypervisor style virtualization like ESX(i)
VMWare ESX(i), assuming your hardware is supported, works great. Rock solid, very good performance, excellent support for windows, linux, solaris, etc guests. VMware supports copy-on-write snapshots, too.
re backups, you do know Windows Server has its own snapshot feature for taking backups, known as VSS (Volume Snapshot Services) ?
do note, snapshots are an AID to backups, they aren't a substitute for proper offsite archived backups for emergency recovery. For instance, they won't protect against system hardware failure. Any, a volume with too many snapshots pending tends to bog down considerably in disk IO performance.
I have to agree that ESXi is better, but I've had VMware server running for years (mostly 1.x versions on CentOS 3.x, but also some CentOS 5.x and VMware 2.x) with no surprises other than jumpy clocks. The servers have sometimes been shut down for power work but I've probably had more than a year of uptime for some intervals on C3 boxes running 3 windows guests. I rarely use the vmware console though - I prefer to vnc directly to the guests once everything is set up. The one advantage of Server vs. ESXi is that you can run things on the host natively if you want.
Les Mikesell wrote:
I have to agree that ESXi is better, but I've had VMware server running for years (mostly 1.x versions on CentOS 3.x, but also some CentOS 5.x and VMware 2.x) with no surprises other than jumpy clocks. The servers have sometimes been shut down for power work but I've probably had more than a year of uptime for some intervals on C3 boxes running 3 windows guests. I rarely use the vmware console though - I prefer to vnc directly to the guests once everything is set up. The one advantage of Server vs. ESXi is that you can run things on the host natively if you want.
I would say another advantage of Server as opposed to ESXi is that you don't need a Windows box to administer it. VMware Server version 1.X uses a "server console" that has Windows and Linux clients, whereas I believe VMware Server version 2 is web-based. VMware ESXi *requires* that you have a Windows machine to install the "vSphere Client".
-Greg
On 2/2/2010 11:09 AM, Greg Bailey wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I have to agree that ESXi is better, but I've had VMware server running for years (mostly 1.x versions on CentOS 3.x, but also some CentOS 5.x and VMware 2.x) with no surprises other than jumpy clocks. The servers have sometimes been shut down for power work but I've probably had more than a year of uptime for some intervals on C3 boxes running 3 windows guests. I rarely use the vmware console though - I prefer to vnc directly to the guests once everything is set up. The one advantage of Server vs. ESXi is that you can run things on the host natively if you want.
I would say another advantage of Server as opposed to ESXi is that you don't need a Windows box to administer it. VMware Server version 1.X uses a "server console" that has Windows and Linux clients, whereas I believe VMware Server version 2 is web-based. VMware ESXi *requires* that you have a Windows machine to install the "vSphere Client".
That's true, but the windows client doesn't need to be part of your production infrastructure - you only need it when making changes or if some problem prevents direct access to the guests with vnc/ssh, etc. A laptop or remote desktop works fine - or you could run a windows VM under VMware server to install the ESXi setup if you really don't want to let windows touch your hardware (which probably came with windows installed...).
So I have tried and used most, I am anxious to see redhats next version of KVM stuff that will make it into rhel 6, whenever that is, once the management tools on LINUX catch up I will be moving towards that. I am currently using vmware server 2 on centos 5.4 and while there were some issues there are documented work arounds and once up it has been very stable. The web interface is not anywhere near as good as the 1.x client it gets the job done since I don't run windows natively anywhere. The bottleneck with almost all of the virtualizations is IO depending on # of hosts and disk layout can affect them. The bare kernel hypervisors like esxi and proxmox etc will tend to have better performance but then you will be unable to run native things on the server also, which is what I do and it works nicely for what I want to accomplish.
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:29 AM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/2/2010 11:09 AM, Greg Bailey wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I have to agree that ESXi is better, but I've had VMware server running for years (mostly 1.x versions on CentOS 3.x, but also some CentOS 5.x and VMware 2.x) with no surprises other than jumpy clocks. The servers have sometimes been shut down for power work but I've probably had more than a year of uptime for some intervals on C3 boxes running 3 windows guests. I rarely use the vmware console though - I prefer to vnc directly to the guests once everything is set up. The one advantage of Server vs. ESXi is that you can run things on the host natively if you want.
I would say another advantage of Server as opposed to ESXi is that you don't need a Windows box to administer it. VMware Server version 1.X uses a "server console" that has Windows and Linux clients, whereas I believe VMware Server version 2 is web-based. VMware ESXi *requires* that you have a Windows machine to install the "vSphere Client".
That's true, but the windows client doesn't need to be part of your production infrastructure - you only need it when making changes or if some problem prevents direct access to the guests with vnc/ssh, etc. A laptop or remote desktop works fine - or you could run a windows VM under VMware server to install the ESXi setup if you really don't want to let windows touch your hardware (which probably came with windows installed...).
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:43 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
You can install virtio disk/net drivers. In fact, Windows 2008 supports virtio disk out of the box iirc.
On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 10:14:50AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
On Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:43 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
You can install virtio disk/net drivers. In fact, Windows 2008 supports virtio disk out of the box iirc.
Maybe with Windows/Hyper-V host, but definitely not with Xen/KVM.
-- Pasi
Over the last year I have worked with Xen, KVM, VMware ESX and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is my recommendation, hands down.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen pasik@iki.fi wrote:
On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 10:14:50AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
On Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:43 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
You can install virtio disk/net drivers. In fact, Windows 2008 supports virtio disk out of the box iirc.
Maybe with Windows/Hyper-V host, but definitely not with Xen/KVM.
-- Pasi
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 2/3/2010 1:19 PM, a arias wrote:
Over the last year I have worked with Xen, KVM, VMware ESX and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is my recommendation, hands down.
Virtualbox has the unique advantage of having a free version that can run on intel Macs. I can't think of anything else that makes it better than VMware server or especially ESXi. What do you like about it?
a arias wrote:
Over the last year I have worked with Xen, KVM, VMware ESX and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is my recommendation, hands down.
I think this is too vague of a opinion on virtualization use. I think it depends on what you're doing with it.
VirtualBox is a nice piece of software for desktop/power user use, however, ESXi and ESX are geared more towards enterprise and business critical use.
So, it kind of depends on what you're going to be doing with it.
Regards, Max
Max Hetrick wrote:
a arias wrote:
Over the last year I have worked with Xen, KVM, VMware ESX and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is my recommendation, hands down.
I think this is too vague of a opinion on virtualization use. I think it depends on what you're doing with it.
VirtualBox is a nice piece of software for desktop/power user use, however, ESXi and ESX are geared more towards enterprise and business critical use.
So, it kind of depends on what you're going to be doing with it.
Regards, Max _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Agreed - it does depend. I have little experience with Xen, VMware / ESXi or KVM. I do use VirtualBox on production servers running instances of WindozeXP running mssql server for some very specific client/server apps and have found that I can do a complete setup on a headless server remotely with little hassle. Getting the screen resolution and mouse sorted out did require loading the VirtualBox Guest Additions. The networking side was also painless, the only item I struggled with was making the WinXP server visible on the windoze client's network neighborhood - in the end I added the WinXP server IP address to the clients lmhosts file - this actually made a lot of sense - as now those clients that do not need the sql server access do not even see the Linux hosted WinXP. FWIW Rob
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Max Hetrick maxhetrick@verizon.net wrote:
a arias wrote:
Over the last year I have worked with Xen, KVM, VMware ESX and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox is my recommendation, hands down.
I think this is too vague of a opinion on virtualization use. I think it depends on what you're doing with it.
VirtualBox is a nice piece of software for desktop/power user use, however, ESXi and ESX are geared more towards enterprise and business critical use.
So, it kind of depends on what you're going to be doing with it.
I took another peek at the current VirtualBox to see how the project is going. It looks like they've improved the network configuration quite a bit so not-so-standard configurations are easier. When I'd last used VirtualBox it took a couple days to get bridged networking to a bond0 device working. However, it looks like the CPU usage issue still exists. The new one does have an internal networking which is something I've wanted since using a similar technology with AIX. On AIX it makes guest to guest transfers operate at incredible throughput.
On Thursday, February 04, 2010 01:52 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 10:14:50AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
On Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:43 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.
You can install virtio disk/net drivers. In fact, Windows 2008 supports virtio disk out of the box iirc.
Maybe with Windows/Hyper-V host, but definitely not with Xen/KVM.
Yes, sorry, you still need a driver that Redhat provides for Windows Vista and up. No support on Windows XP/2003 though as they do not have any virtual i/o support.
2010/2/2 Rafał Radecki radecki.rafal@gmail.com:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
I use VMWare Server, ESXi, Xen, KVM and VirtualBox. Some experiences I've had:
VMWare Server Runs well on CentOS, though there are some workarounds to keep in mind. As of today, you'll need to do some library tweaking to get it to run with the latest glibc. Also, the latest Firefox 3.6 has issues running the administration console. No support for LVM volumes (which can be problematic when doing LVM snapshots on the host side). Networking is easy to configure. Very polished front-end. Guest images can be converted to work with ESXi and vice versa. File based backup so you *can* do snapshots. I haven't figured out how to script it yet, however.
VMWare ESXi Works well (though is not CentOS). Much more enterprise support options. Has a scripting back-end which is quite useful. Commercial support options available. Management of the host itself is different from CentOS.
KVM Runs Linux guests quite well, especially RedHat/CentOS/Fedora installations. Windows installations didn't go as smoothly. Can be scripted very easily so multiple deployments are trivial. Glitches in the GUI management tool (mouse tracking is horrible). Not so easy to configure networking. Performance seems pretty good, though I don't have identical hardware to test versus VMWare. Supports LVM volumes as back-end storage for the VMs so you can do snapshot backups. I'm awaiting support for memory de-duplication on the host side as this can really help cram more VMs into a box (my workloads are very light on memory/cpu but libraries/packages change daily).
Xen
From the CentOS side it's very similar to KVM if you use the virt
tools. Performance is extremely good with paravirtualized machines. It's a workhorse and quite stable, but the GUI is not so great. Networking is a bear to configure. Requires a separate kernel. I've never quite gotten the Xen migration to work.
VirtualBox GUI is not bad. Networking was a bear to configure. Major issue with performance that still is not fully fixed (host CPUs pegged even when guests are idle).
Xen From the CentOS side it's very similar to KVM if you use the virt tools. Performance is extremely good with paravirtualized machines. It's a workhorse and quite stable, but the GUI is not so great. Networking is a bear to configure. Requires separate kernel. I've never quite gotten the Xen migration to work.
There is also the XenServer distribution from Citrix. I use that for a number of customer projects and have found it to be the most stable, featureful and easiest server grade hypervisor solution. The base feature set is free (like ESXi) but you do get a few more features. The officially supported management console is Windows only, but there is a Linux port available that I've heard works well.
I've had no problems at all with the networking support using XenServer... and that is one of the reasons I use it, in fact. Xen in general has better hardware support than VMWare.
If you need to build virtual appliances or are looking for virtual appliances to use for it, though, VMWare and even the regular old Xen on to of Centos/whatever has more support than XenServer.
Just FYI.
--------------------------------- Geoff Galitz Blankenheim NRW, Germany http://www.galitz.org/ http://german-way.com/blog/
Am 03.02.2010 00:07, schrieb Kwan Lowe:
KVM
...
back-end storage for the VMs so you can do snapshot backups. I'm awaiting support for memory de-duplication on the host side as this can really help cram more VMs into a box (my workloads are very light on memory/cpu but libraries/packages change daily).
You mean ksm aka kernel samepage merging? This is already in el5.4 so for sure in Centos, too:
# lsmod |grep ksm ksm 51808 1 kvm 223520 2 ksm,kvm_intel
Rainer
On 2/2/2010 6:20 AM, Rafa? Radecki wrote:
Hi All.
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.
I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be used as a production server. Which option could You recommend and why?
Thank You very much in advance :)
With regards, R.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I use exsi personally..that way i'm not running centos and then a virtualization host and then a host in that...go for a bare metal hypervisor..then you can run windows right off the hypervisor..much faster.
2010/2/2 Rafał Radecki radecki.rafal@gmail.com:
I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one of the following options:
I am very happy with XenServer in our data centre. Use qemu for testing / devel purposes.
Ben
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