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VMWare question. Which to Host?So I thought I'd poll the smarter people that I know... charlie I am running VMware for Windows (GSX 3.0) with 5 Guest OSes (all W2K3) on a Dell 1950 Dual Quad-Core proc with 16 GB of RAM. I can only allocate about 2.8 GB of RAM per guest OS and the performance is pretty bad. It may take up to 30 seconds to logon to the guest OS from the console or RDP. I suppose that running only 3 guest OSes would allow for more resources per machine. One plus is that once you have a base image of the guest, it was very easy to copy and rename the other guest OSes. It also copies across to different hosts as well. I did this for 5 different hosts (physical) and 25 guests (virtual) machines. The copy process was about 30 minutes each versus having to install 25 instances each taking 2-3 hours each. I agree that linux would give the host the best performance since it would have the least overhead. For my configuration, it required 2 GB for the host. Sp Chess For the absolute minimal overhead, run VMware ESXi, only 32MB of footprint, but it's going to run you $500. See VMware ESX, Bare-Metal Hypervisor for Virtual Machines I think for the best bang for the buck, use a barebone install of a Linux distro (no GUI) as the host and install VMware server on top of that. Not sure how often you'll be messing with the host OS except for maintenance. You'll be interacting mostly with VMware Console and the guest OSes directly anyways. Not sure how you came to the conclusion that Windows would be more solid. Also, not following what you meant by "resources would be reused in Windows and loaded in both OSs". Sp Chess, does the login time improve if you reduce the number of guests? David Performance does improve as the guests are reduced (either shut down or removed). I think my config was pushing the host a bit. If we allocated less to each guest, it would respond better. Sp Chess well we run microsoft virtual server 2005 R2 cause it's good with microsoft OSs obviously and cause i have a neat-o script that makes a snapshot and then full copy of the vhd file elsewhere, so i have a full dupe of the vm on a remote file share for DR. charlie stupid thing is that I can buy VMware ESXi at 50% off as a partner or get a free NFR, but they have strict licensing that it is only to be used for testing and demos. and i'm really sure they track licenses and check usage. so i don't want to risk it. charlie you'll probably be better off reading the message boards at vmware... VMware Communities here's an old thread on windows hosts vs linux host: i think the general consensus is that a linux host takes more time to set up, but more bang for the buck if it's set up correctly (highmem kernel, skip ext3, etc.) centos should work out of the box, but ubuntu might require more tweaking. see VMware Server 1 Online Library for officially supported host OS versions. though it seems some people had luck using using the latest and greatest. otherwise, just install windows. consider time vs diminishing returns. unless you're using better hardware (more cores), adding more memory (more than 3.6GB per VM), or wanting a better management interface, there's no reason to go 2.x now. or if you need to run a guest OS that's not supported in 1.x. David Sp Chess, not sure if the following applies to you: If VMs are allocated more than 1.5 GB ram, server and VMs slow down considerably David ... ... ... that's an odd problem. charlie woah... backtrack. highmem kernel? skip ext3? argh.. i already formatted ext3. i guess it makes some sense. why have journaling and that overhead. so what fs is best? reiser? what's highmem kernel... i'm guessing i'll have to compile my own. blah. charlie Sorry, meant to say hugemem, you don't have to compile... see here: VMWare server on Linux - Where's all the memory I think you should still use a journaling FS, but ext3 just doesn't have good performance. from what i've read, XFS and JFS are good candidates. CentOS is binary compatiable with RHEL, they just modify the RHEL source with a non RHEL string so it can be freely distributed. Officially supported Ubuntu versions should be fine, I think it's just be the newer non-supported versions that require tweaking. If you want lean for a web server, you would just run lighttpd on a linux box, unless you absolutely need IIS or ASP.net... David Thanks Dave. I'll check if this helps. Sp Chess another option for you if you get Hyper-V with your subscription, not sure how it compares with ESX. Microsoft plans to release hypervisor David thanks... i do have access, but a few problems.. first Hyper-V is only in RC still... (Windows Server 2008: Virtualization and Server Consolidation) and unfortunately... my system can't support it... * An x64-based processor running an x64 version of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise or Windows Server 2008 Datacenter. charlie hmm... everyone else seems to be keen on XFS too. JFS, not much clamor out there. so both are 64-bit file systems. my systems are 32-bit. so can i run the 64-bit FS on a 32-bit OS? according to wikipedia for XFS, it seems like it's fine. just not sure. charlie Hyper-V got released today. Bummer you can't run it. I just assumed any ol' Xeon would support Intel VT. Paravirtualization (guest OS needs to be modified) appears to give you the most bang for the buck. Didn't understand why people get all excited about Xen until now. OpenVZ with burstable memory shared between VMs is also very cool. Too bad you have to run Windows. Good thread here on slashdot: David VMWare to Provide a Free ESX HyerVisor Variant David dangit.. so i should wait for that now. huh. =T charlie yay! thanks dave! =) VMware ESXi Hypervisor Get a free license for VMware ESXi and build virtual machines in minutes with this easy-to-deploy, OS-independent hypervisor. charlie crap... it doesn't work on the server i have (proliant dl360 g3).. actually esxi only seems to work on the most newest servers only. although regular esx works on any system. charlie Just wanted to add that you can install ESXi on most servers that support ESX, despite the VMWare Guide. I am running two "older" servers with ESXi that are listed as not supported by VMWare, but they work fine, run fast, and have no issues whatsoever. So I guess just go ahead and try ESXi, since it only takes a few in to try, no harm done if it doesn't work. Chris Regarding the comment re. running ESXi on older servers, what are they? Ian Heath
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Title: virtual servers... Add Comment
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