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Almost received all my parts of my home web / media / backup server and need some advice regarding what software setup I roll. Hardware: Intel Core i3 3225 Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H TH Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M1A1600C9 8GB (1x8GB) DDR3 Intel 520 Series 60Gb SSD Western Digital Red 2Gb x 5 Lian Li Case My requirements for this computer are: Media Server - Access for devices across the house - streaming and transcoding File / Backup Server - Automated backups and torrenting linux distros Web Server - Web / E-Commerce Development - Still learning Linux so will likely involve needing to be able to re-roll the distro regularly and experiment with different software stacks Seeing as I have a varied array of uses, many of which are in conflict with each other (stability + long term of a software RAID backup server vs regularly re-rolling for web dev), I thought a possible solution could be to run a bare metal hypervisor on the machine and then to virtualise a number of operating systems. These would be: 2 x Linux - one for file server, one for web server + 1 x Windows - for technologically challenged others in house. The web server instance and the windows instance would only be run as required, with the file server running continuously. How much power consumption could I expect from running the file server through virtualisation instead of without? What would the preferred VM software be for a setup like this, considering I have no experience in virtualisation? (Money is no object)
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Apr 20, 2013 12:37
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blacksun posted:Seeing as I have a varied array of uses, many of which are in conflict with each other (stability + long term of a software RAID backup server vs regularly re-rolling for web dev), I thought a possible solution could be to run a bare metal hypervisor on the machine and then to virtualise a number of operating systems. These would be: 2 x Linux - one for file server, one for web server + 1 x Windows - for technologically challenged others in house. The web server instance and the windows instance would only be run as required, with the file server running continuously. How much power consumption could I expect from running the file server through virtualisation instead of without? Most hypervisors aren't going to see those WD drives in a raid array unless you have a hardware raid controller, not the raid controller on the motherboard. A little googling showed that motherboard on some whitebox builds so ESXi would work. I would stick to Citrix XenServer or VMware vSphere. Hyper-V is an option but I have heard some unsettling things about Hyper-V and linux Guests. Link to XenServer http://www.citrix.com/go/xenserver/download.asp.html Link to vSphere http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/overview.html Thirdly you could do KVM but if you are still learning linux I can't say I would recommend it for what you are trying to do. Course if you are still just playing around you can always install Workstation 9 in windows or Linux. Which Workstation can run, Hyper-V, XenServer, and vSphere so you can get a feel for them without ripping and replacing OS's. Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 20, 2013 16:28
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ragzilla posted:NLB is supported for availability of the connection servers, not sure how it'd work cross site without shared layer 2. I'd avoid DNS unless you're all floating pools that refresh at logoff. We have been using an active/passive Zen Load Balancer cluster for a free, easy way to do clustered IPs back to multiple replica connection servers.
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Apr 20, 2013 23:11
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BelDin posted:We have been using an active/passive Zen Load Balancer cluster for a free, easy way to do clustered IPs back to multiple replica connection servers. 
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Apr 20, 2013 23:14
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Anyone have some numbers for EFI vs Bios for a VM, not the actual Host but for the VM? Does EFI aside from any new OS requirements provide any real benefit?
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Apr 21, 2013 00:21
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Corvettefisher posted:Most hypervisors aren't going to see those WD drives in a raid array unless you have a hardware raid controller, not the raid controller on the motherboard. Would they be able to see the RAID across the network on the same computer? If I had the hypervisor running off of the SSD and then had the software RAID created in the Linux file / backup server instance, would the Windows instance be able to access the RAID across the virtual network? quote:A little googling showed that motherboard on some whitebox builds so ESXi would work. I would stick to Citrix XenServer or VMware vSphere. Hyper-V is an option but I have heard some unsettling things about Hyper-V and linux Guests. Awesome! Thanks for the info. Perhaps I'm making this too complicated for myself. Could I achieve the same thing by running Linux, then a virtualisation program in Linux and virtualising the other Linux instance and the Windows instance? I know that the more modern virtualisation programs don't incur a heavy performance penalty from running within an OS rather than bare metal, so would I really lose anything by structuring it this way? Would this make it easier for my RAID setup too?
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Apr 21, 2013 01:21
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blacksun posted:Would they be able to see the RAID across the network on the same computer? If I had the hypervisor running off of the SSD and then had the software RAID created in the Linux file / backup server instance, would the Windows instance be able to access the RAID across the virtual network? If you have say an NFS or ISCSI service up realize it is then talking to a service on the target, which whatever the taget sees and is configured as will be presented as you want. Hell if non production you could make to VMDKS on two disks and then software RAID the VMDK's on different disks. quote:Awesome! Thanks for the info. You could, do that, Windows or linux will both run Workstation just fine. CentOS may just have a lower overhead. I really need to ask before answering, is the production or home/or play
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Apr 21, 2013 02:01
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Just home / play, no production or mission critical tasks will be run off of this computer. The Linux instance with the file / backup server is as close to mission critical as it comes. The other Linux instance will be used to test environments for wordpress / magento, and the Windows instance to play media on the TV / home theatre setup it will be hooked up to. I've googled the terms you used in your first response (also if you can use this as a gauge of how new I am to virtualisation..) and I think I understand what you are referring to. As the three OS instances will require very little space (the most space intensive will be the Windows install, maybe 30Gb then the remaining space divided between the two Linux instances as required) I was imagining that the RAID could just solely be used as file storage space, so hopefully I wouldn't have to get into the territory of VMDKs.
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Apr 21, 2013 07:14
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If this is for play and stuff just do a workstation install, it does everything you want for now, and in all honesty is probably the best intro to virtualization out there. When things become production look into some HCL ESXi hardware. maybe some VPD or Veeam for backups. Here YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR A 30 day trial here. completely free and should help you find what you need to do, feel free to ask questions! Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Apr 21, 2013 |
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Apr 21, 2013 07:36
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blacksun posted:Just home / play, no production or mission critical tasks will be run off of this computer. The Linux instance with the file / backup server is as close to mission critical as it comes. The other Linux instance will be used to test environments for wordpress / magento, and the Windows instance to play media on the TV / home theatre setup it will be hooked up to. Do you have any need to use this a straight desktop machine? If not, I would go with a similar build as what I have. Mini ITX board/case with an i7 3770. 16gb memory. ESXi boots off a thumbdrive and I have a 256gb SSD for local storage of VMs. I plan on grabbing an IBM M1015 with a handful of 3tb drives once they drop a little more in price. I'll pass the M1015 through to a FreeNAS/NAS4Free VM and share that back out for my backup/media. This is powerful enough for me to spin up small labs/mysql server for XBMC/whatever I feel like loving with. My current only regret is I am capped at 16gb memory with the Mini ITX form factor, but the box is small and sits headless on a cabinet. If I ever was going to upgrade it, it would be the smallest MicroATX case that I can fit a ton of drives inside + a new mobo for a second PCI-e slow and 32gb memory.
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Apr 21, 2013 23:02
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Moey posted:Do you have any need to use this a straight desktop machine? Previously the last lounge computer I had was utilised quite frequently as a straight desktop machine, and I was trying to think laterally about how I could achieve this as well as fill the rest of my needs. There would only ever be two instances running at one point of time, am I really likely to hit a roof of system performance with specs like I have? I can't imagine running backups to the RAID, playing media or browsing the internet, or running Magento (which to test real world environments will always be running limited to one core / 1ghz + 1Gb or RAM).
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Apr 22, 2013 00:24
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blacksun posted:Previously the last lounge computer I had was utilised quite frequently as a straight desktop machine, and I was trying to think laterally about how I could achieve this as well as fill the rest of my needs. If it is going to be used as a traditional desktop as well, go with Corvettefisher's suggestion then. I currently am eyeballs deep in machines, so having one dedicated running headless for VMs/lab work is fine (One mini ESXi server, one desktop, one personal laptop and two work laptops).
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Apr 22, 2013 01:10
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Corvettefisher posted:If this is for play and stuff just do a workstation install, it does everything you want for now, and in all honesty is probably the best intro to virtualization out there. When things become production look into some HCL ESXi hardware. maybe some VPD or Veeam for backups. Does VMware play nicely with Ubuntu? A quick Google seems to point to yes, but it's always worth asking. Only because if I want to go down the ZFS route for my RAID, it seems that Ubuntu is the best option.
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Apr 22, 2013 02:37
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blacksun posted:Does VMware play nicely with Ubuntu? A quick Google seems to point to yes, but it's always worth asking. Only because if I want to go down the ZFS route for my RAID, it seems that Ubuntu is the best option. Yup, I prefer running it on Centos but yeah works fine on ubuntu as well.
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Apr 22, 2013 02:40
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blacksun posted:Does VMware play nicely with Ubuntu?
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Apr 22, 2013 11:38
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blacksun posted:Does VMware play nicely with Ubuntu? Most of the virtualization development at VMware actually happens on Linux. Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat, and Fedora are all really common. Ubuntu is probably going to be one of the better experiences. It is the most common distro used for the graphics work at least.
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Apr 22, 2013 15:56
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Need advice as we're considering moving to a VMware setup. We currently have a pair of servers ( 1x quad core X3210 2.13G processor, 8GB ram, 4x 7200 rpm sata disks ) running centos and xen. Each server hosts 3 vms, one of which is a mysql instance. This has now become disk bound so we are looking to upgrade to a flash setup. What we are thinking of getting 2x HP DL360p 2 x hex core E5-2620 32 GB ram 365 GB fusion io iodrive2 3 x 600GB SAS disks VMWare essentials (don't need vmotion or the more advanced features ) We would want to be able to run about 8 VMs per server max (3-4 web server , 1 app server, 2 mysql). Does this seem reasonable ?
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Apr 23, 2013 14:55
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jre posted:Need advice as we're considering moving to a VMware setup. We currently have a pair of servers ( 1x quad core X3210 2.13G processor, 8GB ram, 4x 7200 rpm sata disks ) running centos and xen. Each server hosts 3 vms, one of which is a mysql instance. This has now become disk bound so we are looking to upgrade to a flash setup. What's the 3x600GB drives for?
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Apr 23, 2013 15:12
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Bob Morales posted:What's the 3x600GB drives for? "slow" storage. Was going to have the os images and database on the flash card and use the drives storing stuff like photos ( of which have gigs and gigs off).
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Apr 23, 2013 15:21
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So, what happens when a server has a hardware error? What happens if the FusionIO card dies? Is downtime like that acceptable? If Disk is the only thing you are hitting the limit on DISK I/O wouldn't a flash accelerated NAS work as well, while provide you with minimized downtime in a host failure? Are you seeing CPU and Memory Constraint on your hosts? The Servers you sized out are very very beefy, I'm not saying not to plan ahead but if you will never use more that 30% of those resources why spend all that dosh, when it could go to something to provide HA and minimize downtime.
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Apr 23, 2013 17:04
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Corvettefisher posted:So, what happens when a server has a hardware error? What happens if the FusionIO card dies? Is downtime like that acceptable? We already have load balancing across the pair of servers so that's what we use for HA. ( We have a full set of vms running on each physical host). I want to spec it such that one server would to be able to handle the entire load in the event of a failure. The overkill is because we are expanding rapidly and the demand on the services, particularly the DB is likely to increase quite a lot so I want to make sure I don't run out of IO in a years time after spending the money. I considered something like having a flash accelerated NAS but the hosting fees of having an additional two servers would negate the benefits. In addition the existing servers are 5 years old, so I would want to replace them anyway which would mean getting 4 new servers instead of 2.
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Apr 23, 2013 17:23
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So I take it you are using some application base load balancing and availability? If you are okay with that then yes I am sure your configuration will be much faster than what you have. IMO, If you are expanding rapidly that would even give me more reason to invest in a NAS then compared to beefy storage hosts. Not only would you gain the ability to scale the environment better. You eliminate having to buy hardware(storage) twice to mimic the configs on both servers. E: by "hosting fees" are these servers residing offsite?
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Apr 23, 2013 21:04
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Corvettefisher posted:So I take it you are using some application base load balancing and availability? If you are okay with that then yes I am sure your configuration will be much faster than what you have. We have a pair of hardware load balancers upstream of the webserver vms. The mysql instances use floating ips and MMM / heartbeat HA stuff. Corvettefisher posted:IMO, Yes, we don't have our own DC so we pay a per server fee which is significant over the lifetime of the servers. We would need a pair of servers for NAS to avoid a single point of failure so wouldn't we be buying hardware twice anyway ? I take your point that having a storage backend and multiple host machines has a better roadmap for scaling out. Do you have any experience with fusion io or similar PCI express flash cards. My main concern was how well the database stuff would run virtualised even with the flash card. (thanks for all the feedback its appreciated)
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Apr 23, 2013 21:27
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My shiny new R620s and PS6100x have been sitting, racked, down at the datacenter for two weeks now and I'm no closer to getting our new VMWare environment setup. It seems that there's a nationwide backorder on PowerConnect switches and the earliest they expect to get them to us is May 7th. This is killing me being so close to having a correctly configured and reliable cluster setup and being able to do nothing about it!
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Apr 23, 2013 23:22
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bull3964 posted:PowerConnect switches Barf. Good luck with them man. We just had to forklift all ours out cause we hated them
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Apr 24, 2013 00:03
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Syano posted:Barf. Good luck with them man. We just had to forklift all ours out cause we hated them Ditto that. We had a reproducible problem where rebooting a certain server would bring down the portchannels to our SAN. We already had cisco switches to replace them, so we just took then out of production and recycled the evil things.
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Apr 24, 2013 00:12
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It's an end to end Dell solution. If there's a problem with them, they have to fix it. It's two switches, three servers, and one SAN. Not exactly a very complex environment.
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Apr 24, 2013 04:08
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My biggest problem with Equallogic SAN's is their snapshots are amazingly inefficient. I hope you don't plan on keeping anything with them for long. Otherwise they're not bad, certainly cake to configure.
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Apr 24, 2013 16:42
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sanchez posted:My biggest problem with Equallogic SAN's is their snapshots are amazingly inefficient. I hope you don't plan on keeping anything with them for long. Otherwise they're not bad, certainly cake to configure. Probably the most we'll use snapshots for is backing up a VM right before doing any sort of maintenance on it. Seriously, right now we're using local storage with hyper-V on like 6 SAS drives and a $200 LSI card. Massive improvement is the understatement of the century.
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Apr 24, 2013 17:29
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Anyone have experiences with setting up VMs with public IPs? I own a small chunk of route-able public IPs, and I want to assign them to my VMs. I'm using VMWare Workstation with a Windows host, and I bridged my guest OS's connections to the NIC that my host machine's using to connect to the Internet. What else do I need to do? I set the correct settings in my guest OS's IP configurations, but it can't ping anything in the vLAN, much less to the Internet.
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Apr 25, 2013 02:10
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nescience posted:Anyone have experiences with setting up VMs with public IPs? Why would you want to do this?
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Apr 25, 2013 03:26
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nescience posted:Anyone have experiences with setting up VMs with public IPs? What are you trying to do exactly?
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Apr 25, 2013 03:45
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Moey posted:Why would you want to do this? Corvettefisher posted:What are you trying to do exactly? The host is a remote server and I want to divide up the resources to host smaller virtual servers.
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Apr 25, 2013 04:12
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My preferred answer: install a firewall that can accept the routed subnet from your ISP. Configure it to NAT each public IP 1-to-1 to whatever private IP's you want to assign to your VM's. Configure that same firewall to only forward traffic on the ports each VM needs. That way your poo poo isn't sitting directly on a public IP and getting hacked .0002 seconds after you boot it. You could also consider something as simple as NAT with port forwarding if each VM is offering unique services. But anyway, we need more info. How is the Windows host connected to the internet? Is it directly connected to a cable modem or something with a publicly routable IP? Is it sitting behind a home router on 192.168.1.xxx? A real business class router from the likes of Cisco or Juniper and I'm offending you by asking this?  If you renumber the Windows host to one of the other IP's you're trying to assign to a VM, can it still get online? Trying to narrow down if it's a networking problem upstream of the VM's or a VMware config problem. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 06:55
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I actually just tried to assign another one of my ips to my host and it didn't work, guess I need to speak to my provider.
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Apr 25, 2013 12:49
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This thread is usually mainly VMware-focused, but... any goons going to Citrix Synergy next month?
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Apr 25, 2013 13:25
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Oh Dell, you are so bad at logistics. I mentioned yesterday about being told the switches are hung up and won't arrive until May 7th. They arrived at our datacenter a half hour ago. How does a company that large have no idea that they shipped something out? That's good news a least, it moves up when I can have this VMware cluster in place by a few weeks.
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Apr 25, 2013 16:26
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nescience posted:I actually just tried to assign another one of my ips to my host and it didn't work, guess I need to speak to my provider. From your prior post it looks like you have a windows box connected straight to the internet and bridging off that? is that correct?
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Apr 25, 2013 17:47
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Corvettefisher posted:What hardware are you using for this? What does your network setup look like? I feel kind of stupid after all of this, but long story short, I wasn't configuring my VMs with correct IP addresses. I've only discovered the error a few minutes ago, I'm about to test them out, I think I'll be fine.
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Apr 25, 2013 21:01
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Is there an easy way to test PXE install of ESXi into a VM? We're acquiring new hypervisors and I'd like to not have to screw around with install media, but I'd like to try it out on a VM first.
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Apr 25, 2013 23:50
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