Virtualisation in Linux

mejinks

mejinks

mejinks

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Has anyone here set up a virtualised infrastructure using Linux?

I'm looking to setup a medium office (80 users) who use SQL, Exchange and file shares. The whole environment comes to less than 1TB of data, but they don't want to spend a bundle of cash, so rather than scrimping on a server ,I thought why not spend a decent wedge on the hardware and use Linux to run the host.

How easy is it to maintain? Do people here have experiences with it?
 
You could look at openvz if you are happy with few (any ?) gui tools.

Proxmox is another option which, last time I looked, user Openvz and Kvm to provide linux and windows virtulization.

You could look at the entry level VMWare vSphere Essentials which is pretty cheap, give vCenter and upto three servers with 1 year support to get you going. I have no idea on UK pricing but where I am it is arount GBP 300 + local tax.

Xen is another but I am no up to dat on their offerings so someone else would be better placed to answer.

If we had some idea of soft and hard upper limits it would be easier to advise. Also some idea of data criticallity and uptime requirements would be good. For example, if they need zero downtime during the working day then a couple of E3-1220 HP/IBM servers clustered with a chunk of ram and vSphere essentials would be something to consider for an initial setup. It can always bee upgraded as needs / availability of funds change. It would also be good to know what level of IT support they have available.

RB
 
Hyper-V server is free, you only license the guest OS's......

Don't stick in a half arsed solution that no one but yourself and a select few will understand in the years to come. Do the company justice and put something mainstream in.
 
Citrix Xenserver (free)
Hyper-V (free)
Even VMWare ESXI is free for the hypervisor
Oracle VirtualBox (if you want to run it inside a guest OS)

Considering your environment, i'd give Xenserver a crack.
 
DiscoDave said:
Oracle VirtualBox (if you want to run it inside a guest OS)
Click to expand...
I would not put anything on Virtualbox in production. There aren't enough tools for it to be a worthwhile VM platform.

Xenserver or VMWare will do what you want.
I feel like Xenserver needs a better, more focused toolset, but it is all present in some form (Just in different tools).
The alternatives, KVM and RHEL, require quite a bit of Linux knowledge to administer effectively. They are good products, but every hypervisor has it's advantages and disadvantages.

@OP, Given that you will be using Exchange (And really need Enterprise Windows 2k8 R2 or better to make the most of it), just stick with Hyper-V.
 
There are no client licences for Xen is there? They have a mix of 2003 and 2008 servers now and the required Cals (I think) but don't you need extra licences like you do with VMware? Trying to find a straight answer from the VMware site makes me want to not bother with VMware lol.
 
You don't need additional licenses to run a single host on VMWare. Getting a license will unlock additional features - but you really need a 2nd host to leverage them.

The only exception is if you want to do full image backups - which requires at least an essentials license, but as RimBlock has said they aren't that expensive.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread but I'm planning a mixture of VMs: Windows Server 2012 Essentials and Openfiler. What would be the best software to use: Zenserver, Hyper-V or ESXI? I'm looking for something thats easy to manage and I wont be installing more than 3 VMs with 16GB RAM.
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Don't stick in a half arsed solution that no one but yourself and a select few will understand in the years to come. Do the company justice and put something mainstream in.
Click to expand...

No suggestions different to what others have said.... but this^ x 10000000, nothing i hate more than a cobble together of systems no one who comes in to the job in the future will have any idea how to use.
 
Another thing to consider here is that one of the strengths of virtualisation is with multiple hosts and the resilience that brings. A single host with all the vm's on it with no failover options is not a good solution and not one I would favour.

As others have said, implement something robust and maintainable - you should be able to justify the investment as typically these are written off over 3+ years.

Good luck...
 
bods said:
Another thing to consider here is that one of the strengths of virtualisation is with multiple hosts and the resilience that brings. A single host with all the vm's on it with no failover options is not a good solution and not one I would favour.

As others have said, implement something robust and maintainable - you should be able to justify the investment as typically these are written off over 3+ years.

Good luck...
Click to expand...

My plan is to get two servers. I would have a raid 1 drive with the server O/S on it and then a Raid 10 array with the VM O/S and filestore on. Currently, I am thinking about 2 Dell 710 with 48Gb of Ram each.

I would back the VMs and filestore up each night.

Could the second server be set up as a hot swap spare that mirrors the drives?
 
With something like VMware you don't need to install to any large drives or raid arrays for the hypervisor, just plug in an internal pen drive and install it there (2GB one would be more than enough) Also wouldn't really recommend using the same drives for VM OS's and file storage, separate the two if you can.

Obviously I specifically state VMware but I'm pretty sure that's doable with other systems as well.....I've just not used them.
 
The R710 has an internal SD card slot for booting ESXi (Dell doc's here). IIRC, the new R720 has a pair of SD slots for redundancy.
 
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