CentOS - Nov 2018 - Hypervisor and access method for workstation VM

I am planning to set up a virtualization host to host a Linux workstation 
VM. It may also host a Windows VM down the road but not on the initial 
list. I'm looking for suggestions as far as:

* oVirt or CentOS? (Did I miss a CentOS equivalent of RHV somewhere?) I'm 
not interested in running VMware. Is it easy to upgrade oVirt or is it 
disruptive to do so?

* Does anyone have real world experience running SPICE over a WAN with 
VPN? I hear great things about SPICE .. but haven't heard much about how 
it performs over a WAN .. which in this case is the Internet with an 
SSL-based VPN.

I have plenty of Linux experience and am very comfortable with a command 
line and config files, but wouldn't mind a graphical interface for some of 
the virtualization components. I may expand to a second virtualization 
host at some point, but it is not in the initial plan.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Barry

Hi Barry,

Please note that I've been involved with oVirt for a while now, so my
answers may be slightly biased...

?????? ??? ??, 19 ????? 2018, 17:30, ??? Barry Brimer <lists at
brimer.org>:
> I am planning to set up a virtualization host to host a Linux workstation
> VM. It may also host a Windows VM down the road but not on the initial
> list. I'm looking for suggestions as far as:
>
> * oVirt or CentOS? (Did I miss a CentOS equivalent of RHV somewhere?)
I'm
> not interested in running VMware. Is it easy to upgrade oVirt or is it
> disruptive to do so?
>
Well, I wouldn't say that's an either/or question as oVirt is pretty
much
built on top of CentOS these days.

Now, oVirt only really becomes interesting when you have 3 or more
hypervisor hosts. In that configuration you can have pretty smooth
zero-downtime upgrades.

If youre only going to have one host, I'd opt for CentOS + qemu-kvm-ev +
Cockpit/virt-manager/boxes.

* Does anyone have real world experience running SPICE over a WAN
with
> VPN? I hear great things about SPICE .. but haven't heard much about
how
> it performs over a WAN .. which in this case is the Internet with an
> SSL-based VPN.
>
Well, I've used it with OpenVPN over the internet and it worked ok. But so
far only for server textual consoles, so can't say much about how well
would it stream GUI.


I have plenty of Linux experience and am very comfortable with a
command
>
line and config files, but wouldn't mind a graphical interface for some
of
> the virtualization components. I may expand to a second virtualization
> host at some point, but it is not in the initial plan.
>
Well the virt-* suit of commands and virsh give you a lot of power in the
command line. Especially virt-builder that can give you working pre-built
VM images, but sometimes it's just quicker to get up and running with a GUI
tool like virt-manager.

> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Barry
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

I am planning to set up a virtualization host to host a Linux
workstation?
VM. It may also host a Windows VM down the road but not on the initial?
list. I'm looking for suggestions as far as:

* oVirt or CentOS? (Did I miss a CentOS equivalent of RHV somewhere?)
I'm?
not interested in running VMware. Is it easy to upgrade oVirt or is it?
disruptive to do so?

* Does anyone have real world experience running SPICE over a WAN with?
VPN? I hear great things about SPICE .. but haven't heard much about
how?
it performs over a WAN .. which in this case is the Internet with an?
SSL-based VPN.

I have plenty of Linux experience and am very comfortable with a
command?
line and config files, but wouldn't mind a graphical interface for some
of?
the virtualization components. I may expand to a second virtualization?
host at some point, but it is not in the initial plan.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Barry
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Barry,

I am in to 3 months of experimenting with a lab machine that I use as
my desktop.  I have used Centos 7.5 host and am using kvm.  I have an
Intel I7-7700 with 64 gigs of memory, two M2 cards each with 250 gigs,
and a RAID 6 array with an LSI card.  I have two other centos 7.5 guest
virtual machine and one windows10 virtual machine.    After I figured
out how everything works ..... I love it.

The biggest problem I had was building a network bridge, (br0) I never
got it to stay working until I turned off NetworkManager on the host.

I am planning a production hypervisor in the next 3 to 6 months that
will have a mail server, database server, and gateway server as guests.

I also had some difficulty with gnome on the host when I started, but
finally got that fixed.  I experimented with the Cinnamon desktop and
was very impressed as to they way it manages multiple guests and
desktops.  I ended up switching back to gnome because that was all I
needed, and my fingers are used to it now.?

Hope this helps,

Greg Ennis

> I am planning to set up a virtualization host to host a Linux
> workstation?
> VM. It may also host a Windows VM down the road but not on the initial?
> list. I'm looking for suggestions as far as:
>
> * oVirt or CentOS? (Did I miss a CentOS equivalent of RHV somewhere?)
> I'm?
> not interested in running VMware. Is it easy to upgrade oVirt or is it?
> disruptive to do so?
>
> * Does anyone have real world experience running SPICE over a WAN with?
> VPN? I hear great things about SPICE .. but haven't heard much about
> how?
> it performs over a WAN .. which in this case is the Internet with an?
> SSL-based VPN.
>
> I have plenty of Linux experience and am very comfortable with a
> command?
> line and config files, but wouldn't mind a graphical interface for some
> of?
> the virtualization components. I may expand to a second virtualization?
> host at some point, but it is not in the initial plan.
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Barry
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Barry,

Using KVM isn't too bad - setting up a bridge is a little work but not 
hard.  I got tired of manually configuring so I wrote some Anisble scripts 
to provision my hosts for KVM and virtualization.   I do run Xen as my 
hypervisor on a Dell Precision 470 (paravirtualization using CentOS).

Running virt-manager to assist you with installing VMs from ISOs is not 
hard at all - but I'd recommend getting your bridge working first.  For 
RHEL/CentOS/Fedora VMs I use Cobbler and KOAN to spin up my VMs as I hate 
doing so manually - but virt-manager works fine (and as an initial way to 
install VMs is great).  For Windows VMs, I use virt-manager.

As far as spice, yeah works great.  Most of my VMs run non-gui mode, but 
if I do need a desktop I happen to use tiger vnc.  As for desktops, I used 
FVWM forever and moved to KDE.  Now I am all about LXDE as its really 
lightweight (not as much as FVWM), but has just enough integration that 
emails and IRC messages get me some sound and balloon notifications.  And 
a nice right click to get on the VPN.  Alas it's supported on Fedora but I 
never got around to attempt a RHEL/CentOS build from source.

My home network runs all my VMs - some for work related stuff (software 
engineer not a sysadmin - but sometimes I play one in real life).  At work 
I typically use RHEV.

I'm on my tablet of I'd share some links I have...happy to follow up
with
you if you want...


Sincerely,

Scot P. Floess

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