Dangle_kt
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| posted on 12/12/08 at 11:31 PM |
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anyone run virtulisation on their PC?
Reading up on virtulisation (we are looking to go virtual on our blade servers at work next year, and I want to shock my IT team!)
Planning on using virtual box on my home PC, and throwing a copy of fedora on it, so I can try a load of open source stuff. Always fancied trying
linux, and fedora seems up there with the most intuitive to a windows user.
Any comments or thoughts welcome.
[Edited on 12/12/08 by Dangle_kt]
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cloudy
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| posted on 12/12/08 at 11:49 PM |
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I recently specced and installed a 3 host VMware ESXi cluster (Each Dual Quad core 3Ghz / 16GB RAM) backed by two lefthand networks 4TB iSCSI sans,
runs 20 live servers without breaking a sweat, and is practically bulletproof 
Servers float around the cluster, migrating still live, the storage self replicates and backs up and there isn't a single link that isn't
redundant
VM is the way to go!
www.warnercars.com
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Dangle_kt
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 12:03 AM |
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Do you have to purchase 20 windows server 20xx licences to operate like that?
quote:
Originally posted by cloudy
I recently specced and installed a 3 host VMware ESXi cluster (Each Dual Quad core 3Ghz / 16GB RAM) backed by two lefthand networks 4TB iSCSI sans,
runs 20 live servers without breaking a sweat, and is practically bulletproof
Servers float around the cluster, migrating still live, the storage self replicates and backs up and there isn't a single link that isn't
redundant
VM is the way to go!
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cloudy
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 12:07 AM |
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Yes
www.warnercars.com
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Dangle_kt
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 12:14 AM |
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yeah thats what is putting off the ceo, not cheap.
If you have 5 host servers, could you run 5 virtual servers and have them so they float around in case one of host servers dies?
Would the 5 host servers need licences too?
Thereby making 10 in total?
I think that is what you said earlier...
[Edited on 13/12/08 by Dangle_kt]
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James
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 12:18 AM |
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First started playing with VMWare and Virtual PC about 8 years ago.
IIRC VMWare was better with Linux and other non-windows virtual machines and Virtual PC better for Windows based stuff.
On a Win 2000 PC I had simultaneously NT, Win2000 Server and a customised Linux build all running at once.
Pointless to me at the time... but fun all the same!
Cheers,
James
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"The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights."
- Muhammad Ali
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cloudy
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 12:36 AM |
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ESXi itself is now free, you pay for the management utilities, vMotion, Consolidated backup and most importantly the infrastructure server which
manages the whole kaboodle
We are looking to do that exact thing to aid portability and reliability, running a 1:1 ratio by just adding the layer of ESXi behind the scenes, no
extra licenses would be required, allthough you loose a lot of the benefits associated with VM server consolidation....
In your example just 5 licenses would be required, ESX the hypervisor runs in a tiny customised linux OS, you don't need windows to actually
provide the host
James
quote:
Originally posted by Dangle_kt
yeah thats what is putting off the ceo, not cheap.
If you have 5 host servers, could you run 5 virtual servers and have them so they float around in case one of host servers dies?
Would the 5 host servers need licences too?
Thereby making 10 in total?
I think that is what you said earlier...
[Edited on 13/12/08 by Dangle_kt]
[Edited on 13/12/08 by cloudy]
www.warnercars.com
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SixedUp
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 02:29 AM |
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For what its worth, I run Ubuntu 8.10 as my main host operating system, and then use virtual box to provide a series of guest operating systems, as I
need them. Works just fine, even on a laptop. However, to virtualise Windows operating systems you need a processor that has virtualisation extensions
(VT-x or AMD-v) and a reasonable amount of memory - I have 2GB.
Also, unless you really have a burning need to use Fedora, I'd really suggest Ubuntu as a better first Linux. Its easier to manage than Fedora,
and has a much larger community (ie more people to help you!)
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vinny1275
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 09:41 AM |
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For Windows virtual licensing, look at the licensing for different versions of 2008 server (which is really good btw). In 2003 if you used the
enterprise edition as the host OS, it gave you a number of licences to use for the virtual guests as well - can't remember how many or if it was
worth it, but worth a look.
If you use a regular software supplier, give them a shout and ask their advice, MS licenses are some branch of magic!
HTH
Vince
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cd.thomson
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 10:05 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by SixedUp
For what its worth, I run Ubuntu 8.10 as my main host operating system, and then use virtual box to provide a series of guest operating systems, as I
need them. Works just fine, even on a laptop. However, to virtualise Windows operating systems you need a processor that has virtualisation extensions
(VT-x or AMD-v) and a reasonable amount of memory - I have 2GB.
Also, unless you really have a burning need to use Fedora, I'd really suggest Ubuntu as a better first Linux. Its easier to manage than Fedora,
and has a much larger community (ie more people to help you!)
Hi there, don't use virtualisation myself, but I'm definitely a bit of a linux geek. Red Hat/Fedora platforms used to be the only real
windows killers as far as usability goes but I think ever since the "Fiesty Fawn" update of Ubuntu this has been blown out of the
water.
Very userfriendly, based on GNOME, fully customisable and nonrestrictive, huge support/development community. All means you cant really go wrong.
Have a look at Ubuntu JeOS, its designed for virtual applications specifically, although tbh I am completely unaware of what its capable of when
compared to what you need it to do.
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yellow melos
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 10:13 AM |
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you will have to be carefull of what Network cards you use as the over head of managing the packets to the different virtual server can cause
slowdowns, on a test envoroment it doesn't matter but in live production it will.
On the licensing front, you can use a license on one machine... so you can install it as many times as you like.... so if you have 1 machine running
windows 2003 server... you can VMware that license 20 times if you like as it's on the same machine. but if you installing Linux then there are
no licensing issues anyway.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 11:05 AM |
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I run Windows as a virtual machine on Mint Linux host using InnoTec VirtualBox --- They do VirtualBox for Windows but I wouldn't fancy
doing it the other way round.
With VirtualBox the virtual machine dosen't have to share the same network card as the host operating system --- I think it should be the same
for VMWare.
I have also run various Linux version in a virtual box even tried running a virtual machine within the virtual machine.
The main problem I encountered was setting up the graphics card & resolution for the virtual machine.
Forgot to add
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox
http://www.linuxmint.com/
[Edited on 13/12/08 by britishtrident]
 
Rescued attachment virtualbox.jpg
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britishtrident
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 11:22 AM |
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I will also add avoid Fedora. Fedora is very seductive but new releaes tend to be buggy as hell and the buggs don't get fixed --- look on it
as an alpha version of of a future Red Hat release.
Fedora is not Debian based and it is best to avoid any Linux distribution that dosen't use the "Debian way" of software
distribution.
Unbuntu is much better but it is a general purpose release at new versions tend to a more than a little buggy. Mint is basically a sorted more user
friendly Unbuntu and it has a fully sorted VirtualBox package ready to download and install using Mint install.
So best advice is download and install Mint on an old system box or hard disk play withit for a couple of weeks then install VirtualBox or VMware on
it.
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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nstrug
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| posted on 13/12/08 at 05:18 PM |
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Confession: I work for Red Hat.
Virtualisation is hugely important to us at the moment - in RHEL we ship xen, and in Fedora 10 we are shipping kvm. However, both of these hypervisors
are 'hidden' by an abstraction layer, libvirt, so it doesn't really matter what the underlying technology is - in fact we can live
migrate a virtual machine from a xen to kvm hypervisor with no downtime.
I strongly recommend you look at Fedora 10. I personally run it on my laptop (Lenovo x300) and the virtualisation is very useful for spinning up
virtual machines with all our supported operating systems on (RHEL2.1, 3, 4, 5...), reproducing customer issues etc. I _should_ run RHEL5 on my
laptop, to toe the company line, but I like all the spangly desktop effects that we don't ship with RHEL yet
The only bits missing from Fedora that you might find in Ubuntu are various legally encumbered codecs (mp3, DivX etc.) Unfortunately we can't
legally ship these, however they are available in RPM format from various 3rd party repositories.
If you have any questions, or want some Fedora DVDs, or are interested in RHEL, please don't hesitate to PM me, or e-mail nstrug@redhat.com.
Cheers,
Nick
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