I need advice on virtualized environments
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I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both. Last I tried this (Windows host, CentOS guest) near two years ago, *nix on MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad. Has it improved? Googling has not yielded any answers. Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I agree with Chris. If you have enough RAM and CPU, the host is pretty much irrelevant if you use platform-independent applications such as VirtualBox or VMware.
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. - Charlie Brooker My Photos/CP Flickr Group - ScrewTurn Wiki v3
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad.
MS Virtual Server is a complete wad of suckage.
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
I've had great luck with the VirtualBox and VMWare hypervizors on Windows and OS X. If you are more comfortable with Windows as the host then stick with that.
And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning. --Isaac Asimov Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. --Ralph Charell
Totally. Hence my preference NOT to use it. I'm comfortable with FreeBSD, Linux and Windows, but I think I'll stick with CentOS x64 for this with VirtualBox. Never tried OS X Cheers.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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I agree with Chris. If you have enough RAM and CPU, the host is pretty much irrelevant if you use platform-independent applications such as VirtualBox or VMware.
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. - Charlie Brooker My Photos/CP Flickr Group - ScrewTurn Wiki v3
I figured as much, but its good to hear the opinions of others as well. Cheers.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both. Last I tried this (Windows host, CentOS guest) near two years ago, *nix on MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad. Has it improved? Googling has not yielded any answers. Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both.
G'Day Mustafa, I wouldn't use Windows or Linux, if you have the right sort of hardware. I would use run VMWare ESXi[^], you can have a look here[^] for hardware compatibility. I have only used ESXi 3.5 Update 4 (forget the Build number and date and am too stuffed to look for the details) on a HP DL580 G5 and would recommend using a Dell, HP or IBM server as they have specific ISO's for there servers. Having said that there is a geneeric ISO which I was warned off by my manager, but version 4 is out now and our Certified HP Engineer advised thhat it would run on certain generic hardware of a much wider variety than 3.5. I have the server running at a client site with 3 VVirtual Machines, Windows Server 2003 Standard as a Terminal Serverfor 40 - 50 staff, Windows Server 2003 Standard running some proprietry software for there finger print scanning sign on clocks and an Ubuntu 9.10 Server running OpenVPN-ALS[^] for VPN access to the client network. Don't know if this will suit your situation, I'm liking what I done so far and am hoping to need to set some more ESXi servers in the near future.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both.
G'Day Mustafa, I wouldn't use Windows or Linux, if you have the right sort of hardware. I would use run VMWare ESXi[^], you can have a look here[^] for hardware compatibility. I have only used ESXi 3.5 Update 4 (forget the Build number and date and am too stuffed to look for the details) on a HP DL580 G5 and would recommend using a Dell, HP or IBM server as they have specific ISO's for there servers. Having said that there is a geneeric ISO which I was warned off by my manager, but version 4 is out now and our Certified HP Engineer advised thhat it would run on certain generic hardware of a much wider variety than 3.5. I have the server running at a client site with 3 VVirtual Machines, Windows Server 2003 Standard as a Terminal Serverfor 40 - 50 staff, Windows Server 2003 Standard running some proprietry software for there finger print scanning sign on clocks and an Ubuntu 9.10 Server running OpenVPN-ALS[^] for VPN access to the client network. Don't know if this will suit your situation, I'm liking what I done so far and am hoping to need to set some more ESXi servers in the near future.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
Ah Mick, but I bless you every time I utter the words "sparrow's fart" :-D In all seriousness though, I'm doing just that and I found out that vmware is offering a free license for ESXi. Life is good sometimes. If this works, you remind me the name of your preferred poison (Brandenburg Rum if I'm not mistaken) and I'll make sure it gets to your doorstep. Because my one and only issue with virtualbox is its networking problems.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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Ah Mick, but I bless you every time I utter the words "sparrow's fart" :-D In all seriousness though, I'm doing just that and I found out that vmware is offering a free license for ESXi. Life is good sometimes. If this works, you remind me the name of your preferred poison (Brandenburg Rum if I'm not mistaken) and I'll make sure it gets to your doorstep. Because my one and only issue with virtualbox is its networking problems.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
Ah Mick, but I bless you every time I utter the words "sparrow's fart" :-D
Well unfortunately I have to get up at Sparrow Fart for work and it's only about 4 hours away and I'm still up.
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
In all seriousness though, I'm doing just that and I found out that vmware is offering a free license for ESXi. Life is good sometimes.
I suppose it would have made sense for me to mention that it is VMware's free version of ESX (I think it maybe now called VSphere). Work uses it all the time as they're cheap bastards and don't mind charging through the nose but dont want to spend anything.
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
If this works, you remind me the name of your preferred poison (Brandenburg Rum if I'm not mistaken) and I'll make sure it gets to your doorstep. Because my one and only issue with virtualbox is its networking problems.
Close, it's Bundaberg Rum. If you have any dramas drop me a line at m m a r t i n [at] e x e m a i l dot c o m dot a u, I'm far from an expert but have managed to get things working. The DL580 is a dual CPU quad core (not sure of the actual CPU) with 16GB of RAM so has all the grunt I need. Networking has been working fine, you can have as many NIC's as the VM needs and can make them static or use DHCP.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both. Last I tried this (Windows host, CentOS guest) near two years ago, *nix on MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad. Has it improved? Googling has not yielded any answers. Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I'm going to throw something a bit "out there" into the mix. If you have Win 7, why not look at using VHDs? I'm running several VHDs right now, and they perform much better than VMs because the only thing that gets virtualised is the hard disk. The only problem that you have is that you have to clean boot into a particular VHD which isn't the most convenient method, but pays off in performance terms - especially as I can run WPF apps and see how they will look. I have VHDs set up for testing VS2010 and Office 2010, and the beauty is that they don't screw with the bare metal. BTW - you can only VHD Win Ultimate or Enterprise. Follow this link[^] for more details.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both. Last I tried this (Windows host, CentOS guest) near two years ago, *nix on MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad. Has it improved? Googling has not yielded any answers. Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Get a large SSD or the fastest hard drive you can (velociraptor or raid 0 array). This will reduce the enormous performance hit inside the guest for disk operations. Like others said it does not matter what os the host is.
John
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both.
G'Day Mustafa, I wouldn't use Windows or Linux, if you have the right sort of hardware. I would use run VMWare ESXi[^], you can have a look here[^] for hardware compatibility. I have only used ESXi 3.5 Update 4 (forget the Build number and date and am too stuffed to look for the details) on a HP DL580 G5 and would recommend using a Dell, HP or IBM server as they have specific ISO's for there servers. Having said that there is a geneeric ISO which I was warned off by my manager, but version 4 is out now and our Certified HP Engineer advised thhat it would run on certain generic hardware of a much wider variety than 3.5. I have the server running at a client site with 3 VVirtual Machines, Windows Server 2003 Standard as a Terminal Serverfor 40 - 50 staff, Windows Server 2003 Standard running some proprietry software for there finger print scanning sign on clocks and an Ubuntu 9.10 Server running OpenVPN-ALS[^] for VPN access to the client network. Don't know if this will suit your situation, I'm liking what I done so far and am hoping to need to set some more ESXi servers in the near future.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
I have heard about that but I have never tried it because it means that you do not get full native performance on any side since you do not run applications from the ESXi operating system. Now only if I had some time and an extra modern machine to play around with.
John
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Get a large SSD or the fastest hard drive you can (velociraptor or raid 0 array). This will reduce the enormous performance hit inside the guest for disk operations. Like others said it does not matter what os the host is.
John
My only worry about the host OS is the VM to use especially since I have guests from both the MS and Linux camps. Basically, it boils down to MS Virtual Server vs VMWare vs Xen vs KVM vs VirtualBox vs my sanity.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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I'm going to throw something a bit "out there" into the mix. If you have Win 7, why not look at using VHDs? I'm running several VHDs right now, and they perform much better than VMs because the only thing that gets virtualised is the hard disk. The only problem that you have is that you have to clean boot into a particular VHD which isn't the most convenient method, but pays off in performance terms - especially as I can run WPF apps and see how they will look. I have VHDs set up for testing VS2010 and Office 2010, and the beauty is that they don't screw with the bare metal. BTW - you can only VHD Win Ultimate or Enterprise. Follow this link[^] for more details.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
Can it run CentOS? Or any other Linux flavor? That's my primary concern because they have several items that are Linux based that I need to use.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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Can it run CentOS? Or any other Linux flavor? That's my primary concern because they have several items that are Linux based that I need to use.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Sorry - no. I suspect that somebody will enable this for Linux sometime soon, but it's not there now.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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My only worry about the host OS is the VM to use especially since I have guests from both the MS and Linux camps. Basically, it boils down to MS Virtual Server vs VMWare vs Xen vs KVM vs VirtualBox vs my sanity.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Out of all of those, the one I found the best is VirtualBox. VMWare lost the plot a couple of releases ago, and Virtual Server sucks on a truly massive scale.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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Out of all of those, the one I found the best is VirtualBox. VMWare lost the plot a couple of releases ago, and Virtual Server sucks on a truly massive scale.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
I never really liked VMWare, but I'll give Mick's suggestion a whirl. If not, then I'll go CentOS or FreeBSD and go VirtualBox. My only bother with VirtualBox is its networking issues. Cheers though mate!
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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I never really liked VMWare, but I'll give Mick's suggestion a whirl. If not, then I'll go CentOS or FreeBSD and go VirtualBox. My only bother with VirtualBox is its networking issues. Cheers though mate!
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Fair enough. Anyway, how are you doing mate? How's the MS?
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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Fair enough. Anyway, how are you doing mate? How's the MS?
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
Sorry Pete, I went to bed after that last post :-O Thankfully, I have not had a single relapse since that speech impediment incident near a year a go now. I was supposed to be in Missouri right now, where I'd start my PhD program on Monday, but money is tight and because Jordan lags behind the rest of the world, the economic slump is hitting it now. I'm lucky and because hard work pays off, I found new contracts with my last clients. Now my plans have been postponed for my PhD but I'm actively working on getting out of here, most likely Canada or the USA but I'm seriously considering Australia or New Zealand. If the economic situation in the UK gets any better, It would certainly get on that list, especially due to its proximity to Jordan and because of my wifes' relations there. Sam though, now he's a precious little kid :-D Nearly two, he's starting to play logic games with us and his chattering in both languages is non-stop and very welcome :) Our little pride and joy :-D
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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Sorry Pete, I went to bed after that last post :-O Thankfully, I have not had a single relapse since that speech impediment incident near a year a go now. I was supposed to be in Missouri right now, where I'd start my PhD program on Monday, but money is tight and because Jordan lags behind the rest of the world, the economic slump is hitting it now. I'm lucky and because hard work pays off, I found new contracts with my last clients. Now my plans have been postponed for my PhD but I'm actively working on getting out of here, most likely Canada or the USA but I'm seriously considering Australia or New Zealand. If the economic situation in the UK gets any better, It would certainly get on that list, especially due to its proximity to Jordan and because of my wifes' relations there. Sam though, now he's a precious little kid :-D Nearly two, he's starting to play logic games with us and his chattering in both languages is non-stop and very welcome :) Our little pride and joy :-D
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
Nearly two
Blimey. Time goes quickly.
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
chattering in both languages is non-stop
Believe me mate. It never stops.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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I have heard about that but I have never tried it because it means that you do not get full native performance on any side since you do not run applications from the ESXi operating system. Now only if I had some time and an extra modern machine to play around with.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
I have heard about that but I have never tried it because it means that you do not get full native performance on any side since you do not run applications from the ESXi operating system.
ESXi is a bare metal HyperVisor running a custom cutdown version of Linux. It gives you all the tools to create, maintain and control your Virtual Machines. While you wil takea small percentage in a performance hit there are other benefits hat make it worthwhile. One physical server so your save on hardware, yes you will spend more on the box but not the same as if you purchase 3 or 4 less owerful servers. The one server will use less power, so less cost and the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. What this last part means is I can allocate more RAM in he virtual machines than I physically have, ESXi will do all the work in the background shovelling around unused RAM from a VM not usinng it to a VM in need of it. I'm not sure at this point if CPU and HDD can be shared the same. All I need is the opportunity to use this more at work, but that will depend on the senior twats letting go of the reins and some knowledge. Unfortunately they hold on to the fear that any knowledge shared lessens their value and power.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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John M. Drescher wrote:
I have heard about that but I have never tried it because it means that you do not get full native performance on any side since you do not run applications from the ESXi operating system.
ESXi is a bare metal HyperVisor running a custom cutdown version of Linux. It gives you all the tools to create, maintain and control your Virtual Machines. While you wil takea small percentage in a performance hit there are other benefits hat make it worthwhile. One physical server so your save on hardware, yes you will spend more on the box but not the same as if you purchase 3 or 4 less owerful servers. The one server will use less power, so less cost and the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. What this last part means is I can allocate more RAM in he virtual machines than I physically have, ESXi will do all the work in the background shovelling around unused RAM from a VM not usinng it to a VM in need of it. I'm not sure at this point if CPU and HDD can be shared the same. All I need is the opportunity to use this more at work, but that will depend on the senior twats letting go of the reins and some knowledge. Unfortunately they hold on to the fear that any knowledge shared lessens their value and power.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
Thanks. I will have to test this.
John
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I need to run several VMs from the same machine (not indefinitely, but for a couple of months) for development purposes. The question is, do I go for a Windows host or a Linux host? The reason I ask is because I'll have several guests of both. Last I tried this (Windows host, CentOS guest) near two years ago, *nix on MS Virtual Server sucked. Sucked bad. Has it improved? Googling has not yielded any answers. Also, if its going to be *nix (Debian or Centos) host route, what do you suggest I use for a VM? VirtualBox is great but it has networking issues.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
If you're serious there is no substitute for VMWare workstation. I work every day in 3 vm's on my machine and I've tested Virtual Box and Virtual PC and there's no comparison if you need to work every day with it. I use windows 7 64 as the host so I can have enough ram available and fast hard drive helps with the vm's on a different drive than the os drive. I looked at some of the other suggestions but keep in mind there's a very real possibility you might want interaction between the vm's or at least copy files between them so that affects your choice of technology.
"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." — Blaise Pascal