Over the last year we have virtualised a lot of infrastructure using the free VMWARE server, we chose this over Xen at the time as it has better support for Virtualising Microsoft platforms.
Towards next year I am looking to further expand our virtualisation project. It would cost us around £6k to get a more robust version of vmware though.(ie live server migration, rather than scripted machine hibernation and moving)
I have been looking at Xen Source (from what I can tell this a free, but not OSS version!) and Xen (open source). I am looking for feedback over the difference between the two versions in relation to functionality. Also interested to see what people think in relation to using the free version, opposed top the OSS version.
Thanks,
Tim
[quote=monkeyx]Over the last year we have virtualised a lot of infrastructure using the free VMWARE server, we chose this over Xen at the time as it has better support for Virtualising Microsoft platforms.[/quote]
We use the open source version of Xen to run our system - pretty much all our servers are now running as virtual machines, including our Internet gateway machines. We use DRBD to mirror volumes between machines so we can get a failed server back up and running pretty much right away. We've just been having this discussion over at EduGeek:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/31283-mirroring-servers-any-...
I basically can't understand quite why everyone seems so convinced they have to spend actual money on virtualisation, or why everyone seems to need to go on courses to figure it out. We use CentOS, with Xen virtualisation being a simple check-box option at install time (I did try Ubuntu but it was a bit more palavar and 7.04 kept crashing when using Xen, CentOS is so reliable I forget it's there). DRBD is a little bit more work to install but not that tricky, and once it's all set up then you just leave it all to run. Others have been saying that you need to spend £100,000+ for a decent server set-up, but we buy £100 Dell servers when they're on special offer.
Thanks very much for your reply.
Can I ask if you have seen this recent Citrix release http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939 as it seems to imply that server version is now totally free with no restrictions. This would appear to have better support for Windows 2003/2008 servers (please correct me if I am wrong)
In relation to running Xen, CentOS could well be a better choice, as RedHat did a lot of good work on this. And I think using Ubuntu server as dom0 may still be an issue. I have previously used CentOS so maybe worth looking at this again for Xen.
We have currently spent £0 on our Virtualisation project and now have 7 servers virtualised :) The main spend we will be making is buying a server that is modern enough to support all the virtualisation features :)
In relation to DRDB we are currently also checking out openfiler and are considering using this with DRDB see this link.I hope by the time we come to implement the project that openfiler 2.3.1 has been released as this supports AOE which has some great benefits over iscsi.
In terms of edugeek I rarley visit the site anymore, as things started getting very silly on there in relation to BSF and moderating posts.I prefer to look on IT focused forums for technical information now.
What I am struggling to make my mind up over is Xen OSS still getting acitvely developed as the same rate xensource? If it is possible to run Windows 2003/2008 as guests with the OSS version then I would be very tempted to use the OSS version, then we would not be a tied to a change in licensing conditions on the free version.
Tim
[quote=monkeyx]Can I ask if you have seen this recent Citrix release[/quote]
Someone posted about it on EduGeek, I didn't really take much notice as our current solution does everything we need.
[quote]This would appear to have better support for Windows 2003/2008 servers[/quote]
Xen seems to run Windows 2003/2008 just fine, no issues - we have a domain controller, print server and application server all running on the same physical machine (licensed for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition). Does need hardware support for virtualisation, though.
[quote]I hope by the time we come to implement the project that openfiler 2.3.1 has been released as this supports AOE which has some great benefits over iscsi.[/quote]
Yes, I quite liked to look of OpenFiler, too. As pointed out over in the EduGeek thread, though, I decided to avoid the centralised SAN approach to storage and went instead for mirrored volumes. This gives you local disk performance without having to buy hugely expensive Fibre Channel kit or make do with iSCISI or AOE over Gigabit Ethernet, and if you want live data replication (in case of fire, flood, etc) then you'd have to replicate a SAN anyway.
[quote]What I am struggling to make my mind up over is Xen OSS still getting acitvely developed as the same rate xensource?[/quote]
Good question, not sure about that one. I get the impression that maybe other VM systems are being developed instead - doesn't Ubuntu support KVM?
Don't forget:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/24/1721248&from=rss
I've been running Xen for a while now and I have to say it works superbly, however I now think that I backed the wrong horse. I need server operating systems with a long support cycle, and I don't want to pay. That more or less restricts me to Ubuntu LTS or CentOS, and both Ubuntu and Red Hat have thrown their weight behind KVM, and the KVM people have managed to get their code integrated into the mainline kernel.
To me, at the moment, KVM does not seem to be as mature as Xen, and it needs a fairly modern processor to run on (so there's no chance of experimenting on old hardware), however one of my current projects is to see if I can get my current environments up and running quickly and reliably on KVM.
Phil
Yes Ubuntu 8.04 does support KVM. There are JeOS images for KVM as well, I also think KVM supports live machine migration. Would probaly want to test how well KVM works with Windows, but does seem to offer support.
I am definetly getting the feeling that Citrix is not doing as much to develop the OSS version this is a formal statement about the release of the freeware version see http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1687130
Makes sense that major linux distros are switching away from xen to KVM as it is still a full OSS project.
So looks like my choice maybe between Xensource freeware or KVM OSS. Will abandon Xensource testing for now and look more closely at KVM.
This is an interesting thread so far. Please can you come back and update it with your findings as you progress.
My exposure to VMs has largely been at the desktop level so far and for that VirtualBox has worked really well on my Ubuntu desktop machines.
I recall wanting to test a Jeos appliance on my old PC but the processor didn't have the necessary virtualisation extensions to run KVM so I promptly gave up :-) I do now have a newer PC which should run it so maybe it's time to get hacking again...
Hi our progress on the Vm solution is getting slowed down by projects such as fitting an LCD screen in the reception :) Our VM test hardware arrived today though :)
Also came accross http://www.montanalinux.org/proxmox-ve-review.html, which is a nice front end to managing KVM.
Has anyone tried this, or give feedback on pro/cons of other management options for KVM.
Thanks,
Tim (aka monkeyx)
We finally took delivery of our test VM server today, and made very good progress evaulating http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Main_Page. We have a Windows 2003 server and test install of Zenoss running. Both seems very responsive, but we will be testing over the next few days to see how stable and reliable they are.
Is there anyone else out there that would be ineterested in assisting/documenting/testing usage of this system. Or as per my previous post, are there better systems out there that could achieve the same end. I like proxmox as everyone on our team can see how it works, you do not need to be a CLI guru to adminster the VM's. But it could be that will hamper how well wen can use OPENVZ, KVM, QUME etc.
Please let me know if anyone is interested as it would be useful to pool information on a project such as this.
Tim
Just for the record we now have 4 windows server and 3 Linux server running on Proxmox. Really pleased with the system so far.