I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 12:11 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: [CentOS] Virtualisation
I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
If it is a home server why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box running CentOS guests for mail, www, ssh?
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:24:59PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
If it is a home server why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box running CentOS guests for mail, www, ssh?
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I want a stable OS base that will have security patches available for a long time :-)
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 12:39 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Virtualisation
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:24:59PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers
these days?
CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could
host a windows
session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
If it is a home server why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box
running CentOS
guests for mail, www, ssh?
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I want a stable OS base that will have security patches available for a long time :-)
Yes, patch catch can be a pain, but even with CentOS 4.4 I still play patch catch, as well as Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD....
If only software would be written perfectly the first time around!
The obsolescence point is the main difference between CentOS and FC.
How long did you have your existing configuration running before you came to the conclusion you need to blow it away for a new one?
2 years, 3 years, 4 or more years?
Doubt you even had it for a year. Biggest thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself an honest evaluation on your actual needs.
-Ross
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On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 01:03:42PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I
Yes, patch catch can be a pain, but even with CentOS 4.4 I still play patch catch, as well as Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD....
Umm, regular patching isn't what I meant. When a product is no longer supported (I specifically mentioned that) the onus is now on me to track all the components and recompile as necessary. Very soon the OS becomes hard to maintain since a lot of packages become replaced by non-RPM equivalents. I'd much rather "yum -d 0 check-update" in a nightly cron job to let me know that upstream has released a new version ;-) Yes,
I acknowledge I have farmed out my risk to an "untrusted third party", but that's part of risk management; my evaluation is that tracking RedHat announcements and CentOS updates over the next 'n' years is safer than having a product unpatched when it goes out of support.
How long did you have your existing configuration running before you came to the conclusion you need to blow it away for a new one?
My existing solution is well overdue for replacement; I only kept it so long because of hotswap IDE problems with the 2.6 kernel. The new system is going to use USB drives instead for ofsite storage.
Doubt you even had it for a year. Biggest thing you can do for
Umm. Your should doubt your doubts :-)
My main workstation (also needs a rebuild, but that one will be a recent FC build because too many programs assume bleeding edge code versions already installed) is 2.5 years old. The server in question is approaching 3 years old. Neither are supported. Both have known security issues. My test box was rebuilt August last year (VMware testing on CentOS 4.4). I rebuilt my linode from FC2 to Centos 4.4 last month.
yourself is to give yourself an honest evaluation on your actual needs.
I've been doing this sort of thing professionally for 17 years. I've been using Linux since the boot+root 0.11 combo disks. I think I know my needs :-)
Infrastucture servers should be stable and not need to be rebuilt with a new OS just because it's more than a year old. CentOS provides that stability. Fedora doesn't.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 1:24 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Virtualisation
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 01:03:42PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I
Yes, patch catch can be a pain, but even with CentOS 4.4 I
still play
patch catch, as well as Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD....
Umm, regular patching isn't what I meant. When a product is no longer supported (I specifically mentioned that) the onus is now on me to track all the components and recompile as necessary. Very soon the OS becomes hard to maintain since a lot of packages become replaced by non-RPM equivalents. I'd much rather "yum -d 0 check-update" in a nightly cron job to let me know that upstream has released a new version ;-) Yes,
I acknowledge I have farmed out my risk to an "untrusted third party", but that's part of risk management; my evaluation is that tracking RedHat announcements and CentOS updates over the next 'n' years is safer than having a product unpatched when it goes out of support.
Risk management? Is this a home network or a business network?
How long did you have your existing configuration running before you came to the conclusion you need to blow it away for a new one?
My existing solution is well overdue for replacement; I only kept it so long because of hotswap IDE problems with the 2.6 kernel. The new system is going to use USB drives instead for ofsite storage.
Doubt you even had it for a year. Biggest thing you can do for
Umm. Your should doubt your doubts :-)
OK, my bad you are currently on FC2 so you've been using Fedora Core for a while now, but no longer get updates.
My main workstation (also needs a rebuild, but that one will be a recent FC build because too many programs assume bleeding edge code versions already installed) is 2.5 years old. The server in question is approaching 3 years old. Neither are supported. Both have known security issues. My test box was rebuilt August last year (VMware testing on CentOS 4.4). I rebuilt my linode from FC2 to Centos 4.4 last month.
I tell you support for the 2.6.9 kernel with software that has kernel drivers is starting to get weaker and weaker. I would wait to jump to a 2.6.18 or 2.6.20+ kernel next so your setup stays as current for the longest time possible.
yourself is to give yourself an honest evaluation on your actual needs.
I've been doing this sort of thing professionally for 17 years. I've been using Linux since the boot+root 0.11 combo disks. I think I know my needs :-)
I'm talking more about personal needs vs. business. I too have been at this a long time and know that often I will romanticize of turning my home network into a mini version of Google...
Infrastucture servers should be stable and not need to be rebuilt with a new OS just because it's more than a year old. CentOS provides that stability. Fedora doesn't.
Well then, sounds like your mind is made up already, why ask?
-Ross
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On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 01:31:34PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I acknowledge I have farmed out my risk to an "untrusted third party", but that's part of risk management; my evaluation is that
Risk management? Is this a home network or a business network?
It's my home network. I have documents on my machines that are private and personal. I don't want hackers on my machines. Therefore I have a risk that needs to be managed. Just because I use professional jargon doesn't mean it isn't relevant.
Well then, sounds like your mind is made up already, why ask?
I asked what virtualisation technology people recommended; I didn't even _mention_ Fedora in my original list because I knew it wasn't suitable. Someone asked me "why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box" and I answered why not.
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 01:31:34PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I acknowledge I have farmed out my risk to an "untrusted third party", but that's part of risk management; my evaluation is that
Risk management? Is this a home network or a business network?
It's my home network. I have documents on my machines that are private and personal. I don't want hackers on my machines. Therefore I have a risk that needs to be managed. Just because I use professional jargon doesn't mean it isn't relevant.
Well then, sounds like your mind is made up already, why ask?
I asked what virtualisation technology people recommended; I didn't even _mention_ Fedora in my original list because I knew it wasn't suitable. Someone asked me "why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box" and I answered why not.
So long as Xen works as promised, it shouldn't matter too much what the host is, it just doesn't have any network connexion terminating at itself.
I'd not rule out FC{6,7} for the host, I'd just not run it as a guest except for testing.
However, if you want a slimmed down host, look at Debian. You should be able to get a host in under 512 Mbytes of disk. It will also have updates into the forseeable future. There's a package, xen-tools, of scripts to help building new guests, and it even supports rpmstrap to build CentOS.
I've not tried hosting CentOS 4 yet (my test hardware lacks virtualisation), I'm having enough trouble^H^H^H^H^H^Hfun with Debian under Debian. And assorted unrelated matters.
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:24:59PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
If it is a home server why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box running CentOS guests for mail, www, ssh?
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I want a stable OS base that will have security patches available for a long time :-)
FWIW, I've been beating my head against Xen for a couple of weeks. *If* you want to run guest OSes that don't specifically support Xen (Windows, for instance) then you need VM support on the CPU, so fairly new recent hardware is required. Also, my experience would seem to indicate that some of the fully-virtual support in Xen and its associated tools is a little rough around the edges. For minimal pain, VMware may well be a better bet in this case.
If you're happy to stick with paravirtual guests then I'd be inclined to wait for CentOS 5, which I believe should allow you to run the same OS in both dom0 and domU straight out of the box (assuming it's anything like FC6).
I've been a VMware user for about eight years and it isn't without it's own problems, like breaking after host kernel upgrades and requiring third party patches to fix it, but it makes a good job of running Windows for the odd occasions when I really need it. If multiple VMs on a single server box is what you're after though, I think Xen is better, assuming it will play nicely. Remember also that Xen allocates physical memory to specific VMs, so if you want each VM to have a reasonable amount of memory, you need enough in the server for all of them.
James.
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 01:44:19PM +0000, James Fidell wrote:
hardware is required. Also, my experience would seem to indicate that some of the fully-virtual support in Xen and its associated tools is a little rough around the edges. For minimal pain, VMware may well be a
The Xen problems you mention sound similar to problems others have reported. A friend of a friend elsewhere has played with Xen in RHEL5b1 and RHEL5b2 and gave up, sticking with VMware.
I've been a VMware user for about eight years and it isn't without it's
I've been using VMware for a couple of years and am trialing the free VMware server on an older machine (Celeron 1200; why yes... it's slow!). So far the Centos kernel patches just require rerunning the setup process to rebuild the modules. So far so painless :-)
physical memory to specific VMs, so if you want each VM to have a reasonable amount of memory, you need enough in the server for all of
The new box has 2Gb of RAM just in case (4 times that of the box it will be replacing).
Thanks!
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 8:56 AM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Virtualisation
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 01:44:19PM +0000, James Fidell wrote:
hardware is required. Also, my experience would seem to
indicate that
some of the fully-virtual support in Xen and its associated
tools is a
little rough around the edges. For minimal pain, VMware
may well be a
The Xen problems you mention sound similar to problems others have reported. A friend of a friend elsewhere has played with Xen in RHEL5b1 and RHEL5b2 and gave up, sticking with VMware.
I've been a VMware user for about eight years and it isn't
without it's
I've been using VMware for a couple of years and am trialing the free VMware server on an older machine (Celeron 1200; why yes... it's slow!). So far the Centos kernel patches just require rerunning the setup process to rebuild the modules. So far so painless :-)
physical memory to specific VMs, so if you want each VM to have a reasonable amount of memory, you need enough in the server
for all of
The new box has 2Gb of RAM just in case (4 times that of the box it will be replacing).
I don't know of anybody using it, but for a pure Xen environment how about using rPath+Xen?
Build a minimal rPath host system with Xen support. The only downside is you will need to find a Xen management interface for it. Would be nice if a good web-based Xen management tool existed.
rPath should have the long-term support you are looking for and allows you to roll your own services to build a custom appliance.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
Just some info:
I think that the deciding factor of which way to go depends on how much money you are willing to spend and the amount of time that you want to invest in setting this system up and maintaining it. I personally have some of all three of the previously mentioned vitalization technologies running on our network (Solaris Zones, Parallels, XEN, and VMWare), and each take different amount of these resources to setup and maintain.
Solaris Zones are probably one of the coolest solutions. It allows you to allocate system resources across zones without having to reinstall anything or duplicate configs. Setting up zones is not the hardest thing to do, but one of the most robust; if you are one of the types of people that has to know every angle of something before using it, this is probably not the way to go.
XEN is not that hard to setup, but you are limited on the types of OS's that you can install. There has been a lot of information floating around about XEN lately, and if you are looking for more information about setting it up, I would look at the last two SysAdmin issues on Security and Open Source (I think that there was about 2 or 3 articles).
VMWare is expensive if you are looking for and ESX type solution. If you were thinking about setting up workstation, good luck getting those things to come up at boot. :)
Parallels is just like VMWare but for Mac, and it does not sound like you are a Mac user, or have any hardware laying around to even consider this solution.
Just my opinion, and my experience.
Hi List,
I would like to know if somebody knows about an apache support mailing list? I saw you have to be member of the apache community in order to subscribe yourself at apache.org
Thanx,
--Ivan.
On 02/03/07, Ivan Arteaga iarteaga@cwpanama.net wrote:
Hi List,
I would like to know if somebody knows about an apache support mailing list? I saw you have to be member of the apache community in order to subscribe yourself at apache.org
http://httpd.apache.org/lists.html
"The following mailing lists relate to the Apache HTTP Server project. Users should consider subscribing to the Announcements or User Support mailing lists. Other lists are for people interested in helping with the development and debugging of the server."
Will.
vmware server is free.
Joshua Gimer wrote:
Just some info:
I think that the deciding factor of which way to go depends on how much money you are willing to spend and the amount of time that you want to invest in setting this system up and maintaining it. I personally have some of all three of the previously mentioned vitalization technologies running on our network (Solaris Zones, Parallels, XEN, and VMWare), and each take different amount of these resources to setup and maintain.
Solaris Zones are probably one of the coolest solutions. It allows you to allocate system resources across zones without having to reinstall anything or duplicate configs. Setting up zones is not the hardest thing to do, but one of the most robust; if you are one of the types of people that has to know every angle of something before using it, this is probably not the way to go.
XEN is not that hard to setup, but you are limited on the types of OS's that you can install. There has been a lot of information floating around about XEN lately, and if you are looking for more information about setting it up, I would look at the last two SysAdmin issues on Security and Open Source (I think that there was about 2 or 3 articles).
VMWare is expensive if you are looking for and ESX type solution. If you were thinking about setting up workstation, good luck getting those things to come up at boot. :)
Parallels is just like VMWare but for Mac, and it does not sound like you are a Mac user, or have any hardware laying around to even consider this solution.
Just my opinion, and my experience.
-- Thx Joshua Gimer
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
VMWare server is fine for testing VM's, but if you plan on using VMWare in a production environment you should upgrade to ESX or the other commercial products they offer like Infrastucture. As mentioned previously ESX is it's own OS (custom RHEL), whereas VMWare Server (and player) run on top of your current OS and will not be tuned to run a lot of VM's.
Matt
On 3/2/07, William Warren hescominsoon@emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com wrote:
vmware server is free.
Joshua Gimer wrote:
Just some info:
I think that the deciding factor of which way to go depends on how much money you are willing to spend and the amount of time that you want to invest in setting this system up and maintaining it. I personally have some of all three of the previously mentioned vitalization technologies running on our network (Solaris Zones, Parallels, XEN, and VMWare), and each take different amount of these resources to setup and maintain.
Solaris Zones are probably one of the coolest solutions. It allows you to allocate system resources across zones without having to reinstall anything or duplicate configs. Setting up zones is not the hardest thing to do, but one of the most robust; if you are one of the types of people that has to know every angle of something before using it, this is probably not the way to go.
XEN is not that hard to setup, but you are limited on the types of OS's that you can install. There has been a lot of information floating around about XEN lately, and if you are looking for more information about setting it up, I would look at the last two SysAdmin issues on Security and Open Source (I think that there was about 2 or 3 articles).
VMWare is expensive if you are looking for and ESX type solution. If you were thinking about setting up workstation, good luck getting those things to come up at boot. :)
Parallels is just like VMWare but for Mac, and it does not sound like you are a Mac user, or have any hardware laying around to even consider this solution.
Just my opinion, and my experience.
-- Thx Joshua Gimer
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- My "Foundation" verse: Isa 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.
-- carpe ductum -- "Grab the tape" CDTT (Certified Duct Tape Technician)
Linux user #322099 Machines: 206822 256638 276825 http://counter.li.org/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Matt Shields wrote:
VMWare server is fine for testing VM's, but if you plan on using VMWare in a production environment you should upgrade to ESX or the other commercial products they offer like Infrastucture. As mentioned previously ESX is it's own OS (custom RHEL), whereas VMWare Server (and player) run on top of your current OS and will not be tuned to run a lot of VM's.
OTOH, I have VMware Server running on a RHEL4 x86_64 4 x opteron850 (2.4Ghz) server with 8GB ram, its hosting 6 CentOS i386 instances (512MB virtual each), a Windows Vista instance (1GB virtual) and a Solaris 10 x86 instance (1GB), and its been running just sweet as can be. the various guest instances are being used to test factory floor messaging middleware (java stuff), and have performed just great.
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 09:07:13AM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
OTOH, I have VMware Server running on a RHEL4 x86_64 4 x opteron850 (2.4Ghz) server with 8GB ram, its hosting 6 CentOS i386 instances (512MB virtual each), a Windows Vista instance (1GB virtual) and a Solaris 10
*grin* isn't that against the Vista licence agreeemnt? :-) :-) :-)
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 09:07:13AM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
OTOH, I have VMware Server running on a RHEL4 x86_64 4 x opteron850 (2.4Ghz) server with 8GB ram, its hosting 6 CentOS i386 instances (512MB virtual each), a Windows Vista instance (1GB virtual) and a Solaris 10
*grin* isn't that against the Vista licence agreeemnt? :-) :-) :-)
AFAIK, not vista professional, just 'home'.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
To add to Matt's comment VMWare ESX actually runs on it's own unique vmware created kernel, not 'on-top' of RHEL or RHEL clone, they use a 'RHEL like' clone to display a console only, not drive the vmware technology. Just wanted to clear up the common misconception, not that its too relevant to the conversation.
Craig
Matt Shields wrote:
VMWare server is fine for testing VM's, but if you plan on using VMWare in a production environment you should upgrade to ESX or the other commercial products they offer like Infrastucture. As mentioned previously ESX is it's own OS (custom RHEL), whereas VMWare Server (and player) run on top of your current OS and will not be tuned to run a lot of VM's.
Matt
On 3/2/07, William Warren hescominsoon@emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com wrote:
vmware server is free.
Joshua Gimer wrote:
Just some info:
I think that the deciding factor of which way to go depends on how much money you are willing to spend and the amount of time that you want to invest in setting this system up and maintaining it. I personally have some of all three of the previously mentioned vitalization technologies running on our network (Solaris Zones, Parallels, XEN, and VMWare), and each take different amount of these resources to setup and maintain.
Solaris Zones are probably one of the coolest solutions. It allows you to allocate system resources across zones without having to reinstall anything or duplicate configs. Setting up zones is not the hardest
thing
to do, but one of the most robust; if you are one of the types of
people
that has to know every angle of something before using it, this is probably not the way to go.
XEN is not that hard to setup, but you are limited on the types of OS's that you can install. There has been a lot of information floating around about XEN lately, and if you are looking for more information about setting it up, I would look at the last two SysAdmin issues on Security and Open Source (I think that there was about 2 or 3
articles).
VMWare is expensive if you are looking for and ESX type solution. If
you
were thinking about setting up workstation, good luck getting those things to come up at boot. :)
Parallels is just like VMWare but for Mac, and it does not sound like you are a Mac user, or have any hardware laying around to even consider this solution.
Just my opinion, and my experience.
-- Thx Joshua Gimer
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- My "Foundation" verse: Isa 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.
-- carpe ductum -- "Grab the tape" CDTT (Certified Duct Tape Technician)
Linux user #322099 Machines: 206822 256638 276825 http://counter.li.org/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 3/2/07, William Warren hescominsoon@emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com wrote:
vmware server is free.
If you read my post, I was referring to ESX, it is not free. :)
On Fri, March 2, 2007 10:31 am, Joshua Gimer wrote:
Just some info:
I think that the deciding factor of which way to go depends on how much money you are willing to spend and the amount of time that you want to invest in setting this system up and maintaining it. I personally have some of all three of the previously mentioned vitalization technologies running on our network (Solaris Zones, Parallels, XEN, and VMWare), and each take different amount of these resources to setup and maintain.
Solaris Zones are probably one of the coolest solutions. It allows you to allocate system resources across zones without having to reinstall anything or duplicate configs. Setting up zones is not the hardest thing to do, but one of the most robust; if you are one of the types of people that has to know every angle of something before using it, this is probably not the way to go.
I second Solaris zones are very rubust. Easy to setup and maintain.
Paul wrote:
I second Solaris zones are very rubust. Easy to setup and maintain.
otoh, for those who aren't familiar, Zones are NOT virtual machines, they are simply virtual USER spaces. all zones run directly under the 'host' kernel. the zones are more like a super-chroot, aka bsd 'jail', they have their own /etc/passwd and so forth, but they do NOT have the capability of running different OS's.
On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 08:41:48PM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
Paul wrote:
I second Solaris zones are very rubust. Easy to setup and maintain.
otoh, for those who aren't familiar, Zones are NOT virtual machines, they are simply virtual USER spaces. all zones run directly under the 'host' kernel. the zones are more like a super-chroot, aka bsd 'jail', they have their own /etc/passwd and so forth, but they do NOT have the capability of running different OS's.
A bit more detail, also for those who aren't familiar...
Zones (or "containers") are closer to "vserver" and "jails" and other variants like that rather than a true virtual machine . They are lightweight containers with security seperation. As Solaris matures additional resource limits are able to be placed on zones, but at the moment it's a pretty "co-operative" in nature thus far (eg "projects" _inside_ the zone). Security is absolute, CPU scheduling can controlled, memory and I/O is a little weak. What makes zones quite neat is that Sun have done a good job of updating lots of the tools to support them; eg patching can patch every zone on a box at the same time. Building a zone can take as little is 5 minutes and very little disk space if the main filesystems are shared, or a lot longer if individual copies of files are required.
Solaris 10 update 3 (or is it update 4?) will have "secure solaris" extensions built in, based on zone technology. Each zone has a security level and the OS can stop you from moving data from a restricted zone to an open zone (for example). Quite neat. Sun even put a security context onto each pixel of the X display to stop cut'n'paste from breaching security!
Paul wrote:
I second Solaris zones are very rubust. Easy to setup and maintain.
But it is still software virtualization? Last time I checked you could only run the same OS in the zones as on the host. Has that changed?
I much prefer a hardware hypervisor architecture. Let the hardware manage your virtual machines. More robust, faster and it puts management of hardware where it belongs. Too bad no-one makes hardware hypervisors for x86 hardware, afaik.
On 3/1/07, Stephen Harris lists@spuddy.org wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:24:59PM -0500, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
If it is a home server why not a bare-bones FC6 Xen box running CentOS guests for mail, www, ssh?
Because I don't want to play "patch catchup" when FC6 is no longer supported or have to rebuild to FC10 at some later point. I want a stable OS base that will have security patches available for a long time :-)
you are right, I am using this configuration
Centos4.4 with VMWare Server on it, and Debian Etch for my server, it works great! (this is full Server config, so the Centos4.4 is the server CD with no X on it)
I also have another configuration in other PC in my home the one I use for my personal use, and from i am writing this email now. It has Debian Etch on it and also VMWARE server installed, and CentOS 4.4 Server to run my DNS, email etc. I also use VMware to hold XP and other Linux Distros i like to test, like DSL, ubuntu, FC6 or even SUSE.
I recommend you that, but I have never tried XEN, which seems to be the fashion now :).
If you want to install VMware server on FC6 or on Debian Etch you will need some tricks that can be found here.
http://linux.go2linux.org/taxonomy/term/8
along with other tips for virtualization.
hope it helps. regards,
U should give a try to FC6 with Xen for virtualization , its really cool?
Stephen Harris lists@spuddy.org wrote: I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 17:29:00 +0000 (GMT) abhishek singh abhishek.rhce@yahoo.co.in wrote:
U should give a try to FC6 with Xen for virtualization , its really cool?
Any good link to recommend for FC6 & Xen?
Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
Have you looked into using Centos 4 with OpenVZ?
Best Regards, Camron
Camron W. Fox Hilo Office High Performance Computing Group Fujitsu America, INC. E-mail: cwfox@us.fujitsu.com
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:11:26PM -0500, Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Personally I'm using VMWare-workstation, but it isn't an ideal solution: - it costs - it is hard to make VMs start at system boot - it is a heavyweight solution
The reason I am using -Workstatin as opposed to the free -Server offering is because -Server does not provide some virtual hardware that is useful in a workstation environment.
I find it odd what drives your requirements in the end. In my particular case, I am connecting to a Windows VM through a Sun Ray session, and found my Windows VMs were less usefull without the sound devices because Windows Movie Maker would not start on a system which lacked a sound card. (And I wanted Windows Movie Maker to convert video streams from the high-bitrate that comes from the camera down to something a little more portable, not to actually view anything.)
I am probably going to split things up, though -- I have an older system which I will move the Windows VMs to, and then run -Server on my main system so I can do the other virtualization things I want to (mostly experimenting with other OSs and sandboxing software packages I am playing with) much easier.
I have a 900-series Intel Core Duo processor, purchased expressly so that I could do Xen and the like but have found that they are not quite ready for the kind of use I want to put them to.
David Mackintosh wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:11:26PM -0500, Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Personally I'm using VMWare-workstation, but it isn't an ideal solution:
- it costs
- it is hard to make VMs start at system boot
- it is a heavyweight solution
ESX is a "lighter-weight" solution (in that it runs on the bare-metal rather than requiring a host OS that sucks up resources. It of course is the most expensive solution but IMHO, it's worth every penny. ESX is the only virtualization option I would care to put production workloads on.
The reason I am using -Workstatin as opposed to the free -Server offering is because -Server does not provide some virtual hardware that is useful in a workstation environment.
I find it odd what drives your requirements in the end. In my particular case, I am connecting to a Windows VM through a Sun Ray session, and found my Windows VMs were less usefull without the sound devices because Windows Movie Maker would not start on a system which lacked a sound card. (And I wanted Windows Movie Maker to convert video streams from the high-bitrate that comes from the camera down to something a little more portable, not to actually view anything.)
VMWare Server can do sound, it's just that the default virtual machine doesn't include a sound card. Just go to the settings for the VM, add new hardware and add a sound card. Still Workstation does a number of handy things that Server doesn't, multiple snapshots for instance...
Jay
Another solution one must pay attention to is KVM.
Vasiliy Boulytchev vasiliy@linuxspecial.com
Jay Lee wrote:
David Mackintosh wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:11:26PM -0500, Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Personally I'm using VMWare-workstation, but it isn't an ideal solution:
- it costs
- it is hard to make VMs start at system boot
- it is a heavyweight solution
ESX is a "lighter-weight" solution (in that it runs on the bare-metal rather than requiring a host OS that sucks up resources. It of course is the most expensive solution but IMHO, it's worth every penny. ESX is the only virtualization option I would care to put production workloads on.
The reason I am using -Workstatin as opposed to the free -Server offering is because -Server does not provide some virtual hardware that is useful in a workstation environment.
I find it odd what drives your requirements in the end. In my particular case, I am connecting to a Windows VM through a Sun Ray session, and found my Windows VMs were less usefull without the sound devices because Windows Movie Maker would not start on a system which lacked a sound card. (And I wanted Windows Movie Maker to convert video streams from the high-bitrate that comes from the camera down to something a little more portable, not to actually view anything.)
VMWare Server can do sound, it's just that the default virtual machine doesn't include a sound card. Just go to the settings for the VM, add new hardware and add a sound card. Still Workstation does a number of handy things that Server doesn't, multiple snapshots for instance...
Jay
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 3/1/07, Jay Lee jlee@pbu.edu wrote:
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 12:11:26PM -0500, Stephen Harris wrote: ESX is a "lighter-weight" solution (in that it runs on the bare-metal rather than requiring a host OS that sucks up resources. It of course is the most expensive solution but IMHO, it's worth every penny. ESX is the only virtualization option I would care to put production workloads on.
Not totally acurate. All VMWare servers (including ESX) are customized versions of RedHat Enterprise linux.
CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org writes:
Matt Shields wrote:
Not totally acurate. All VMWare servers (including ESX) are customized versions of RedHat Enterprise linux.
AFAIK this is not true, ESX has its own "kernel". Ralph
ESX Server is a "split-brain" product, much in the same way RTLinux implements hard a real-time kernel that runs the regular Linux kernel as a non-realtime process.
ESX server has its own microkernel ("hypervisor", technically) that runs a version of Linux as the "service console". In other words, ESX uses Linux to access the console hardware (display, kbd, mouse, etc.), but does not use Linux to provide virtualization services. I don't know exactly how disk and network I/O are handled.
And yes, the version of Linux is derived from RHEL, but it is emphatically NOT RHEL, nor is it a re-compile like CentOS, nor is it a "clone" of any sort. It's probably fairly accurate to call it a "fork" of a custom rebundling of RHEL from some point in the past.
-Adam Thompson Divisional IT Department, St. James-Assiniboia School Division 150 Moray St., Winnipeg, MB, R3J 3A2 athompson@sjsd.net / tel: (204) 837-5886 x222 / fax: (204) 885-3178
Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
I'd recommend openvz (http://openvz.org). It is based on redhat kernels are has proved to be very reliable and stable for me on centos 4.4. The Centos box does a swag of tasks, including,
openvz kernel (complete with virtual DMZ) Vmware server NFS server SMB Server courier imap (with mysql auth) oracle postfix (with virtual domains and mysql lookups) bacula squid cache Fedora Directory Server
and it never misses a beat.
Cheers,
Brian
centos 4.x using vmware server will fill th needs nicely. You have the long term lifespan of the RHEL branch and your virtualization taken care of in one fell swoop and you can't beat the price..<G>
Stephen Harris wrote:
I'm building a new server at home to handle most of my internal requirements (mail, news, dns, dhcp, backups being the biggies). I also want it to host a couple of virtual servers which are allowed incoming connections from the internet (mail gateway, web server, ssh server); these are virtual so if a hacker _can_ break in then they're limited as to what they can see.
At present the virtual machines are vserver instances on an old FC2 box.
I'm wondering what people recommend for virtual servers these days? CentOS 4 with a vserver kernel? Wait for CentOS 5 and use Xen? VMware? (Vmware is the heavy solution, but it does mean I could host a windows session if I wanted to). Or Solaris 10 and zones?
Any thoughts?
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