CentOS - Feb 2010 - Virtualization - what do You recommend?

Hi All.

I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use one
of the following options:
- KVM;
- VMWare Esxi;
- VMWare Workstation.

I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM
snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be
used as a production server.
Which option could You recommend and why?

Thank You very much in advance :)

With regards,
R.
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2010/2/2 Rafa? Radecki <radecki.rafal at
gmail.com>:
> Hi All.
>
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use
one
> of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
>
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM
> snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be
> used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
>
> Thank You very much in advance :)
>
> With regards,
> R.
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>
You can only install KVM or VMWare Workstation/Server in CentOS, I
think you should try KVM, because it's opensource and it supports
Windows but you need special hardware like the latest CPUs from AMD or
Intel...

-- 
Linux User #452368
http://twitter.com/vpadro

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves"

Rafa? Radecki ha scritto:
> Hi All.
> 
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use
> one of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
> 
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like
> LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest
> will be used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
> 
> Thank You very much in advance :)
> 
> With regards,
> R.
> 
> 
I know it is off topic on this list (and I really wish it was based on CentOS),
but I feel to recommend http://pve.proxmox.com/, because:
It's really easy and fast to setup
Supports KVM and OpenVz
Can be clustered (central management and expandability)
Supports LVM snapshots to backup KVM guest

I'm using on production, and for now I didn't had any trouble.
The main "missing" feature is software raid, which isn't
recommended nor
supported for production, but can be achieved on test machines. But beware that
with KVM you will almost certainly need a good HW raid with bbu cache.
Also the development is very active and more functionalities are coming on each
version (shared storage via drbd, and many other, I think that the wiki can
cover this better)

HTH
Regards, Lorenzo

Rafa? Radecki wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use 
> one of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
> 
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like 
> LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest 
> will be used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
> 
What else are you going to run?  VMware Esxi is probably the best if the windows
guest(s) are the main priority.  I think you need a windows box to run the 
vSphere client to manage it, though (but it is very nice, letting you do things 
like connect your client cd/dvd to the guest for installs, etc.)  VMware server 
would be OK if the guest(s) are somewhat secondary and you also run some 
services directly on the host.  It has the down side that whenever you update 
the host kernel you need to reboot the guests and run through the configuration 
step before they'll restart.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

On 02/02/10 11:20, Rafa? Radecki wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use
one
> of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
> 
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM
> snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be
> used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
> 
> Thank You very much in advance :)
> 
> With regards,
> R.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi, Personally, I'd recommend VMware Workstation. Always been good for
me, however lately I have been trying out Virtualbox (PUEL) :-). They
have an Open Source Edition also (Virtualbox), only it lacks USB
Support. If you go on there website, you can see the 3 missing features.

Tried KVM, but it didn't like my box not having AMD-V.

I think the best way to determine what's best for you, would be to try
them all, and see which you prefer :-)

-- 
Jake

Rafa? Radecki wrote:
> Hi All.
>
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to 
> use one of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
>
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something 
> like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the 
> guest will be used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
does KVM in CentOS have native virtualization 'drivers' for Win2008 
server? if not, I wouldn't run it in a production environment.

I wouldn't use Vmware Server/Workstation for a production server, 
either. I found VMWare server 2.x quite unstable on a number of 
different configurations, and the performance is considerably lower than 
the native hypervisor style virtualization like ESX(i)

VMWare ESX(i), assuming your hardware is supported, works great. Rock 
solid, very good performance, excellent support for windows, linux, 
solaris, etc guests. VMware supports copy-on-write snapshots, too.

re backups, you do know Windows Server has its own snapshot feature for 
taking backups, known as VSS (Volume Snapshot Services) ?

do note, snapshots are an AID to backups, they aren't a substitute for 
proper offsite archived backups for emergency recovery. For instance, 
they won't protect against system hardware failure. Any, a volume with 
too many snapshots pending tends to bog down considerably in disk IO 
performance.

2010/2/2 Rafa? Radecki <radecki.rafal at
gmail.com>:
> Hi All.
>
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use
one
> of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
>
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something like LVM
> snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the guest will be
> used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
I use VMWare Server, ESXi, Xen, KVM and VirtualBox. Some experiences I've
had:

VMWare Server
Runs well on CentOS, though there are some workarounds to keep in
mind.  As of today, you'll need to do some library tweaking to get it
to run with the latest glibc. Also, the latest Firefox 3.6 has issues
running the administration console. No support for LVM volumes (which
can be problematic when doing LVM snapshots on the host side).
Networking is easy to configure. Very polished front-end. Guest images
can be converted to work with ESXi and vice versa. File based backup
so you *can* do snapshots. I haven't figured out how to script it yet,
however.

VMWare ESXi
Works well (though is not CentOS). Much more enterprise support
options. Has a scripting back-end which is quite useful.  Commercial
support options available. Management of the host itself is different
from CentOS.

KVM
Runs Linux guests quite well, especially RedHat/CentOS/Fedora
installations. Windows installations didn't go as smoothly.  Can be
scripted very easily so multiple deployments are trivial. Glitches in
the GUI management tool (mouse tracking is horrible). Not so easy to
configure networking. Performance seems pretty good, though I don't
have identical hardware to test versus VMWare. Supports LVM volumes as
back-end storage for the VMs so you can do snapshot backups. I'm
awaiting support for memory de-duplication on the host side as this
can really help cram more VMs into a box (my workloads are very light
on memory/cpu but libraries/packages change daily).

Xen
>From the CentOS side it's very similar to KVM if you use the virt
tools. Performance is extremely good with paravirtualized machines.
It's a workhorse and quite stable, but the GUI is not so great.
Networking is a bear to configure. Requires a separate kernel.  I've
never quite gotten the Xen migration to work.

VirtualBox
GUI is not bad. Networking was a bear to configure. Major issue with
performance that still is not fully fixed (host CPUs pegged even when
guests are idle).

On 2/2/2010 6:20 AM, Rafa? Radecki wrote:
> Hi All.
>
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to 
> use one of the following options:
> - KVM;
> - VMWare Esxi;
> - VMWare Workstation.
>
> I plan to install Windows 2008 as a guest. I want to use something 
> like LVM snapshots for backups. Stability is also very important, the 
> guest will be used as a production server.
> Which option could You recommend and why?
>
> Thank You very much in advance :)
>
> With regards,
> R.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>    
I use exsi personally..that way i'm not running centos and then a 
virtualization host and then a host in that...go for a bare metal 
hypervisor..then you can run windows right off the hypervisor..much faster.
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2010/2/2 Rafa? Radecki <radecki.rafal at
gmail.com>:
> I plan to use virtualization in my production environment. I plan to use
one
> of the following options:
I am very happy with XenServer in our data centre.  Use qemu for
testing / devel purposes.

Ben