Virtualization

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pixel_ninja

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Hi guys,

I am interested in finding out and playing around with visualization. Can anybody link me to a good tutorial that will guide me through the steps?
 
I prefer using XEN since it offers full virtualization, if your CPU supports it (Inter VT & VT-d features) and it's also very easy to use. With most Linux distro's you could just install the virtualization group, which will install the kernel & userland tools. Get familiar with how it works, and then start moving onto more advanced stuff.

CloudMin has a GPL version of their website based cloud control panel, which uses XEN and does a lot of cool stuff remotely :)

You could also look at VMWare (download their 60-free trail account, of the free VMware esxi) or VirtualBox for other alternatives.
 
If you only want to run a couple of different operating systems on a desktop machine for testing then VMWare Player or VirtualBox OSE (both free) would be good choices.

If you plan to run an enterprise class, virtual hosting environment then you want to look at the "heavy weights".
Three options that I'd recommend are:
- Citrix XenServer (You can play with the free version if you like. It just has a couple less features such as high-availability (automatic failover))
- VMWare vSphere
- I haven't played with Microsoft Hyper-V so I can't comment on it but from what I hear it's not a bad solution.
The only downside of Hyper-V is that it doesn't appear to perform as well as the competition's products.
However if you are a Microsoft house you can probably get some good deals on licensing.

From the above three personally I'd pick XenServer.
It's pretty cheap compared to VMWare's licensing, performs very well and it supports paravirtualized as well as full virtualization (same as VMWare) so you can pick what you want.
Flexibility vs raw performance.

Quite frankly unless you really need to get all the performance you can out of your hardware I'd pick full virtualization over paravirtualization.
Full virtualization is a lot simpler to set up and maintain (no integration into the host OS neccessary) and you're probably not going to see a performance degredation of more than about 15%.

I've only dabbled a bit in virtualization so take my advice with some salt.
There is a lot of content online so start Googling.
 
Great info in this thread so far, but I'll elaborate on why I am looking into virtualization.

My accounting firm I work for has around 70 staff, we only have one server (specs below) which handles our mail, network drives, remote desktop sessions. I'm thinking of virtulizing the server into 2 servers (3 if i cant get a NAS- is this worth it?)

Will virtualization help us out in terms of speed/performance? (pastel/caseware tends to become quite slow if alot of users are active at any given time)

SERVER SPECS:

Windows Server 03 Standard ed SP2
Intel Xeon 3.0GHz
3GB Ram (3x1GB DDR2 - 400)


Sucks I know right( but if I can prove that this machine wont go to waste if we upgrade then I may be able to get an upgrade)

So I guess my aim is to use this server for a less intensive task(thinking mail?) then set remote desktop on the other machine, then what do I do for information storage? put it onto the new machine(via virtualization? or just straight?) this is where NAS comes in I guess... is it worth the money?
 
In this case virtualization could help, since you could isolate the 3 different operations. But, bear in mind that Windows will take some RAM for itself, and VMware / VirtualBox also (if you go this route) so the whole experience may be slower than anticipated.

But, if you seperate mail from Pastel then other users could still get mail while Pastel halts to a grind.

A NAS is a nice-to-have, until you have a need for it which you could justify financially. It could, however aid in adding extra storage (either for backups, or even just for data) to the network without interrupting everyone else during working hours. If you have the cash for a SAS / SSD type NAS then it could help speed up thing, if / when disk IO becomes a problem. But then you'll also need a gigabit network to actually see the difference.
 
Virtualization is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve! :)

Virtualization is used to allow more than one operating system to run on the same hardware at the same time at the cost of performance.
i.e. Instead of having 10 servers each doing their own thing and idling along at low load levels you can have 1 powerful server running 10 operating systems.
You'll save on hardware costs, power requirements, cooling (aircon) and space.
Virtualization isn't going to increase performance since each guest OS on the host is going to be sharing the hardware.

What you're probably looking for is clustering with load balancing (sharing hardware and network load across several servers).
In the process you can gain high-availability so a single server failure won't take all your applications down.

Based on the server specs you mentioned I doubt it would be worthwhile to create a cluster reasons being:
1. You need to run a clustering environment of some sort that is not usually easy to configure or manage. You need considerable knowledge to implement a clustered system especially when something bad happens (and it will).
2. The applications that you run need to be capable of being clustered in most cases.
3. If you want the cluster to have high-availability you need to ensure full redundancy which is costly. (Dual power supplies, dual UPS's, dual network paths and switches, etc.)
4. You typically need a central storage device such as SAN/NAS which can be costly unless you use free alterantives like OpenFiler or a shared data system such as DRBD.

It's going to be a lot easier and cheaper to just buy a better server or split the applications onto multiple servers in my opinion.
 
SoftDux-Rudi said:
In this case virtualization could help, since you could isolate the 3 different operations. But, bear in mind that Windows will take some RAM for itself, and VMware / VirtualBox also (if you go this route) so the whole experience may be slower than anticipated.

But, if you seperate mail from Pastel then other users could still get mail while Pastel halts to a grind.

A NAS is a nice-to-have, until you have a need for it which you could justify financially. It could, however aid in adding extra storage (either for backups, or even just for data) to the network without interrupting everyone else during working hours. If you have the cash for a SAS / SSD type NAS then it could help speed up thing, if / when disk IO becomes a problem. But then you'll also need a gigabit network to actually see the difference.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input SoftDux-Rudi,

So should I suggest that this current server be used as a mail server only? Then move term server and networked drives on the new pc?

where does this leave me in terms of licensing though? I mean I can clone the drive to the new pc install the correct drivers, but then obviously my old server will be illegal? Apparently I heard someone say that I cannot transfer server 03 CALs to 08? so we would have to purchase new licenses again for all the staff :(
 
70 users should NOT be running off that kind of hardware really...especially not EVERYTHING on one server,so many things could go so badly wrong.

Ask them this: when it does fail,will the "savings" from not spending on more hardware help? Much like life insurance adequate hardware and licenses are there to make the worst-case scenario less devastating.

Ideally what you'd need to do is drop down a few thousand ( 30ish excl licenses ). Get a Quad Core with 16gig or so of RAM and a lovely RAID NAS and some sata drives for the big server. Virtualize the different required business units' into its own servers ( SBS2008 premium for instance allows licensing for a 2nd Server 2008 to be used for Databases )

SBS can handle the VPN/Terminal services,DB server explicitly for Databases and NAS for network drive storage

Barring that chat to the guys from http://www.universe-direct.co.za/ and http://www.xperien.com/ a call,find out what smaller Refurbished servers they have available. Then seperate out the Mail/Terminal services or Pastel/Caseware to this new box


*Edit - NAS has benefit of not needing CALs to access and the smarter ones can integrate to use your AD authentication
 
Personally if I was facing budget constraints then I would keep the existing one to do the TS because you have the licensing for it and its not transferable. Then I would get another server(it doesnt have to be huge) on the second server you can run the databases for pastel and the mailserv/fileserver.
You dont need to buy enterprise specced NAS drives, I often setup stuff that is based on 2 or more cheap NAS drives like iomega home media drives and they work perfectly. All you have to do is setup your backup routines to make duplicate copies to each drive.
You can achieve a decent level of redundancy like that.
 
PsyWulf said:
70 users should NOT be running off that kind of hardware really...especially not EVERYTHING on one server,so many things could go so badly wrong.

Ask them this: when it does fail,will the "savings" from not spending on more hardware help? Much like life insurance adequate hardware and licenses are there to make the worst-case scenario less devastating.

Ideally what you'd need to do is drop down a few thousand ( 30ish excl licenses ). Get a Quad Core with 16gig or so of RAM and a lovely RAID NAS and some sata drives for the big server. Virtualize the different required business units' into its own servers ( SBS2008 premium for instance allows licensing for a 2nd Server 2008 to be used for Databases )

SBS can handle the VPN/Terminal services,DB server explicitly for Databases and NAS for network drive storage

Barring that chat to the guys from http://www.universe-direct.co.za/ and http://www.xperien.com/ a call,find out what smaller Refurbished servers they have available. Then seperate out the Mail/Terminal services or Pastel/Caseware to this new box


*Edit - NAS has benefit of not needing CALs to access and the smarter ones can integrate to use your AD authentication
Click to expand...

Haha Psy,

your reply has gotten me all pumped up!! Yeah I'm keen for a huge upgrade but I know that I'm going to be asked why we cant simply just upgrade our hardware, and keep our server 03 as is? is the 32bit - 4GB ram thing all thats holding us back from doing this? couldnt we then reinstall a 64bit 03 server on the new pimped machine?
 
jprheeder said:
Haha Psy,

your reply has gotten me all pumped up!! Yeah I'm keen for a huge upgrade but I know that I'm going to be asked why we cant simply just upgrade our hardware, and keep our server 03 as is? is the 32bit - 4GB ram thing all thats holding us back from doing this? couldnt we then reinstall a 64bit 03 server on the new pimped machine?
Click to expand...


Spend a few K to try to squeeze life into a system that isn't very upgradeable anymore,or get a VASTLY better box for cheap. Desktop Core2 Quad systems with cheap motherboards would perform better than your outdated Xeon :)


Step by step if you intend on trying to salvage the situation at your office in a non-over-the-top budget way:

1) Get a NAS and move the network folders over to this
2) Get a refurb server,move your Pastel/apps over and keep the Domain controller/Mail server/Terminal server on the Xeon box
3) Once the domain server hits snail's pace again get a replacement server,migrate your SBS over and breathe a sigh of relief that you have some redundancy
 
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