[nflug] Virtualization
Brad Bartram
brad.bartram at gmail.com
Mon Dec 15 15:37:17 EST 2008
Thanks Pete - good insights. It's what I'm looking for.
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Cyber Source <peter at thecybersource.com>wrote:
> virtualization just plain rocks, end of.
>
> Why? Lets see.
>
> 1. Hardware transparency! No need for whether you have kernel modules
> loaded, latest drivers, etc.. Can take a windows vm from box to box and the
> hardware does not change cause its virtual.
> 2. Nice way to keep old stuff running. I have my old phpaga (great app)
> which does all my invoicing, is php4 based with mysql, pear and a bunch of
> other things. This thing was a COMPLETE pain in the ass to install and after
> becoming somewhat proficient in vm's, I suggested to the developer, why not
> make a vm out of an install, this way all you need to do is setup a new
> database. I took my old FC4 box and made a vm out of it, just for my
> invoicing app. Which I run on what I call my application server, which fires
> up and shuts down the vm via crons and does backups as well.
> 3. snapshots. wanna make a change and not sure of the ramifications? take a
> quick one second snapshot (with extremely small footprint) that if the
> change was not good, can revert the snapshot in seconds right back to where
> you originally were.
> 4. backups. tar em up.
> 5. read-only (see below)
>
> on and on, the experienced can see the possibilities unfolding. I just bid
> on a job where it will be to take 11 old ass hodge podge (like 6 different
> distros and windows) and create 1 thin client server and 1 virtual machine
> server (running the free vmware server). This wall in one whack, all
> workstations still running ancient hardware will be upgraded and running the
> latest and greatest ubuntu and then from within the thin client, the will
> access their windows xp vm's via terminal service under their ubuntu
> desktops. no ups's needed, they can only log off windows (which are
> read-only too, data gets written to network shares (samba) that get scanned
> nightly from clam under the Linux samba shares. windows is read-only itself,
> no need for anti-virus).
>
> Sorry for the babble, just busy but wanted to chime in.
>
>
> Brad Bartram wrote:
>
>> I'm not too worried about the equipment working. It's only used at
>> certain points in the workflow and that would be eliminated by centralizing.
>>
>> I deal with a lot of front end data processing - (between .25 - 2TB at a
>> go) - which is analyzed by the users individually. Storing that amount of
>> data is a beast and is especially so when Oracle is involved. So, by
>> processing the data on a big server-class machine with lots and lots of RAM
>> and fast disk access to both the storage side and the database would be a
>> great step in increasing productivity and efficiency. Virtualizing the
>> workstation environment makes sense to me since the front end is pretty
>> light once the processing is done.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Justin Elze <formulals1 at gmail.com<mailto:
>> formulals1 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Connecting from thin clients to the VMs via terminal services or
>> citrix assume?
>> My only fear would be whatever specialized equipment your running
>> working over terminal services....I work with a customer who runs
>> a custom app written foxpro for dos....regardless we created a
>> number of VMs from a base image and all of their employees use
>> older machines and terminal services to connect works very well.
>>
>> Obviously this isn't a good metric but I have a few dual quad core
>> machines with 26gb of ram running 20+ virtual
>> machines....obviously a lot of these VMs are low load but
>> performance is great....also saves room/power consumption in the
>> datacenter.
>>
>> Having the ability to clone VMs and quickly bring up new machines
>> is great for testing/dev enviroments is a huge benifit of
>> virtualiaztion.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Brad Bartram
>> <brad.bartram at gmail.com <mailto:brad.bartram at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I actually have a couple of different applications I'm toying
>> with right now.
>>
>> For the first one, I'm looking at running a windows based
>> application for multiple users. I can't get into too much
>> detail for various reasons but it's a traditional client /
>> server app with an oracle backend. Under the current
>> configuration, I have quite a few front end machines at the
>> user's desks with each machine being about $10,000. The
>> problem is that the machines aren't that powerful - they just
>> have some specialized equipment connected to them.
>>
>> Ideally, I want to take those machines off the user's desks -
>> consolidate the hardware in the data center and virtualize the
>> user's environment allowing them to connect via a thin
>> client. This is very, very simplified - but it's the gist of
>> what I'm thinking.
>>
>> The second application would be the distribution of resources
>> in a web services environment. This would be a linux
>> environment and would be a LAMP (or in my case LAPP - the
>> first P being postgres) setup. Just trying to get the most
>> bang for my buck I guess.
>>
>> Brad
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Justin Elze
>> <formulals1 at gmail.com <mailto:formulals1 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Are you leaning towards VMWare or Xenserver?
>>
>> Currently I run a number of Xenserver deployments running
>> on HP C class blades and using HP MSA1500 SANs for shared
>> storage this allows for xenmotion(moving VMs between
>> physical servers with no downtime). Overall I have been
>> very happy with Xenserver I have been using it since
>> release 4.0 and it has come a huge way in the past year to
>> the current version 5.0.
>> Xenserver makes it very easy to vlan tag interfaces on VMs
>> giving you the ability to host multiple customers on the
>> same hardware and keep them unaware of each other.
>>
>> One of Xenservers short comes when you virtualize all the
>> servers at a SMB is tradionally backups were done with a
>> directly attached tape back up and there is no provision
>> in xenserver for it.
>>
>> What kind of enviroment are you looking to virtualize? I
>> could probably give more appropriate advice/suggestions
>> knowing that.
>>
>> Justin Elze
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Brad Bartram
>> <brad.bartram at gmail.com <mailto:brad.bartram at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I'm interested in this whole virtualization of servers
>> and services trend that's been on going for quite a
>> while. I've worked with it on workstations and in the
>> traditional host - guest configurations to gain access
>> to non-native applications - you know, user-level
>> stuff. I'm interested in it on the server side of
>> things though. I've read the marketing propaganda and
>> seen the vendor white papers and all the trade
>> news-vertisements, but I'm interested in hearing some
>> real world opinions.
>>
>> I know some of you have opinions on it. So what's the
>> good, the bad, the shortcomings, and the strengths?
>> Are there any things I should look out for or things I
>> should consider in planning out hardware purchases and
>> such?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Brad
>>
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