Home virtual solution

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pingjockey

Limp Gawd
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Nov 14, 2006
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I am look to consolidate a bunch of servers (3) in my home to a single virtual host and I am torn about what to use as a hypervisor.

The hardware I plan on using for the virtual host is as follows:

Intel Q6600
Abit IX38GT
2 2 TB Hard drives
3 500GB Hard drives
8GB of ddr2 ram

I am going to p2v a Windows Home server, a amahi server and a windows server 2008 r2 which are all running on seperate boxes.

What I would like to do is run all that on one box to consoldate space and power so I am trying to figure out which hypervisor would suit my needs.

Microsoft Hyper-v Server, VMware server running on either linux or windows or something else?

I am open to suggestions and thanks in advance
 
subed.

I'm actually looking at doing the same thing, slightly different mix but same principles apply. Interested to see what recommendations you get.
 
I support a mostly VMware environment at the office but I really don't want to spend a ton of money on Vsphere.

Hyper-v sounds promising but it has some limits just like Vmware server.

So I am still trying to figure out the best plan.
 
You could use VMWare Server (runs on top of Linux or Windows), or go with Sun's VirtualBox. I wouldn't recomend ESXi as it does not support RAID inheritly. You have to use a hardware raid controller.

VMWare Server on top of a Linux Distro works fine for me.
 
Pretty much any of those will work. VMware's VMConverter is the best free P2V tool in my opinion.

I'm using Hyper-V for my home environment, but ESXi as long as it works with all of your hardware is fully capable of doing the same. If your Abit board doesn't have an Intel NIC, it will probbly be easiset to buy and use an Intel add-in rather than fighting to get a non-Intel NIC to work. ESXi is not quite as friendly as even the free version of Hyper-V server when it comes to drivers.

On the other hand, getting the free version of Hyper-V to work in a non-domain environment takes some tweaking. Don't even try to do it by hand. One of the MS developers wrote a helpful VBScript based script that REALLY helps getting Hyper-V going with remote management in a non-domain environment. Just run a search on "hvremote.wsf". Great stuff.

I've been running all my server type stuff at home in VMs since the MS Virtual Server 2005 came out for free. P2V was so painful back then it was just much easier to rebuild your servers.

My 2008 R2 Hyper-V server is currently hosting the following:
(The server is an HP desktop box with one 640 GB drive internal, 1 TB drive internal, and 2 1TB, 2 1.5 TB, and 2 2TB drive in 2 external 4 bay SATA enclosures. Powered by 3 core 2.1 GHZ Athlon 64 processor, with 8 GB of RAM)

Windows Home Server - 1002 MB RAM, raw mapping to 1 1TB drive, 2 1.5 TB drives, and 2 2 TB drives.

Windows 2008 R2 DC - 802 MB RAM, 30 GB VHD on 640 GB intenal drive which has host OS

Windows Vista VM of my employers standard laptop image (I work from home, but mostly on another companies network over VPN using a VM on my main workstation that I P2Vd from their approved laptop image, I use this image VPN'd into my companies network for time and project tracking stuff) - 1500 MB, 30 GB VHD on the internal 1 TB drive

Windows 2008 R2 server - 1024 MB using a 30 GB VHD on the 640 GB drive. Runs as my VPN/RDP gateway and mail server running hmailserver. Also my Echoware server for providing point to point remote control sessions for relatives.

Windows 2008 R2 server - 1002 MB, using 1 30 GB VHD file, and 1 20 GB VHD file on the 640 GB drive. Web/FTP server. My wife is a graphic artist and uses the FTP server to transfer files back and forth with clients. Houses her main web site and several demo sites as well as my site for doing image hosting for forum posts and such.

Windows Vail Server - 1002 MB. 160 GB VHD and 1 300 GB VHD on the internal 1 TB drive. Running the beta version of the next version of Windows home server. Haven't played with it much yet.
 
Does Hyper-v allow you to over extend a guests ram? Like say you decided to give a virtual machine like 2GB of ram will the hypervisor page out to a pagefile?

The hyper-v solution sounds like a good one though as ESXI is way to expensive to run.
 
I don't know about RAM. But Hyper-v has hard drive passthrough... great when used in combination with WHS. All your data disks (outside the system disk) can be used in passthrough, so they can be pulled into any other system to get your data off
 
If you want to run WHS as a VM then 2008r2 w/hyper-v is your best option. As its the only one that will allow you to do direct disk mappings.
 
curently hyper-v does not support oversubscribing of Ram. that feature will be added at a later date (SP1?)
 
I was in this boat once.

I went with ESXi running on an old Dell PE SC440 with a E6600, 6gb ram, and 2tb of storage for all of my server needs, it runs untangle, a couple of win2k3 servers and a few xp boxes, along with a win2k8 r2 box.

My WHS box, due to the storage needs, I went with an atom board.

I like esxi because it is not a picky bitch like hyper-v, but it is also free, needs a lot less resources to run, and is a lot more mature.
 
Danny Bui said:
I think he was referring to the cost of the hardware that's actually compatible with ESXi. Might have been referring to the server class hardware.
Click to expand...

It's worked with everything that I have tossed it on...the only issue I have is that some boards, the onboard nic doesn't work.
 
sc0tty8 said:
I like esxi because it is not a picky bitch like hyper-v, but it is also free, needs a lot less resources to run, and is a lot more mature.
Click to expand...

Do you mean Hyper-v Server or Server08 w/ hyper-v because they behave quite differently.
 
Really you found it to be picky with hardware? In what regards?

I havent had a single issue with any of my instances.
 
I was unaware that ESXI was free.... But I would imagine that its really pretty picky about the hardware if it is anything like ESX.

I think at this point I may go with Hyper-v server as I have not really played to much with a microsoft vm solution other than virtual pc.

My major concern is spending a ton of money on this project as I am trying to convince my finance manager (AKA Wife) that this is a good idea.

So I can have hyper-v write directly to drive? What sort of performance gain or hit would I get from this since?

My thoughts are that if I were use VHD files I can still mount the file under windows 7 and get to the data.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Really you found it to be picky with hardware? In what regards?

I havent had a single issue with any of my instances.
Click to expand...

Picky with software support. If it' linux, you ain't using it easily on hyper-v.

pingjockey said:
I was unaware that ESXI was free.... But I would imagine that its really pretty picky about the hardware if it is anything like ESX.

I think at this point I may go with Hyper-v server as I have not really played to much with a microsoft vm solution other than virtual pc.

My major concern is spending a ton of money on this project as I am trying to convince my finance manager (AKA Wife) that this is a good idea.

So I can have hyper-v write directly to drive? What sort of performance gain or hit would I get from this since?

My thoughts are that if I were use VHD files I can still mount the file under windows 7 and get to the data.
Click to expand...

The only issues I've had with hardware support is onboard nics.

Yes you can give hyper-v a whole drive. You don't even need windows 7 to get the data out of vhd's, there are 3rd party apps to open them, same with the vdmk's.

Like I said, I use ESXi at the house and it just works. I use hyper-V at work, and if you want just a basic solution hyper-v is it.

The tools to do any p2v conversions for exsi is free and straight forward. For hyper-v, there is a disk2vhd that I have not used, scvmm which I have used, and I think there is another one. I can tell you the esxi variant just works and isn't picky.

I also run my UTM router on top of exsi as hyper-v + linux=no, and I could not get hyper-v to assign the network card correctly.

EXSI comes with a client that will work on a PC without having to do anything extraordinary to install/use it.

Hyper-V, for windows 7 you have to download the remote server administrator toolset, then there is a script needed to apply permissions at both ends, and the server needs to be booted. This last part is retarded. Reboot a server to set the permissions? This I have a problem with. In a production environment, there is no booting servers. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote
If there is a better way let me know as I have a hyper-v box here I do not play with due to this.

How many boxes/servers do you run at the house? My wife was skeptical, then I slapped together my setup and my power bill dropped dramatically. Next up, green disks for my WHS box.
 
I have been using VMWare Workstation at home to do most of what you are talking about, because I have it.

In a home environment, is there a reason to move to EXSI?
 
ESXi free all the way. Supports Intel ICH chipset for AHCI mode (not fakeraid) and will offer all the features etc. and the vmware vsphere single host management for alarms and resource pools.

For moving from vmware workstation to esxi, one reason would be to give more resources to vm's. the hypervisor has way lower overhead so you get higher density.
 
SpeedyVV said:
I have been using VMWare Workstation at home to do most of what you are talking about, because I have it.

In a home environment, is there a reason to move to EXSI?
Click to expand...

Dedicated box with less overhead.
 
Well it sounds like from a performance standpoint that ESXi might be the way to go at this point.

A few simple questions though:

1) As this Virtual Host is only going to have about 4 to 5 guests at the most is one storage pool of about 4 TB going to be enough? One of guest is going to be a home server and will have a crap ton of media on it (800GB).

2) Backups: Are snapshots available in ESXI? And what would be a decent backup plan for this configuration. One of the Guests will be running as a crashplan home server for onsite backups or is that a bad idea for a guest?

3) The onboard NIC is a Realtek Gigabit NIC. Is that going to be enough or should I drop a second NIC into the system.

Thanks again for all the lively discussion and recommendations in advance.
 
1-Thin provision the guests. As needed, you can add sotrage and move them from 1 disk to another.
2-Snap shots are, no backup comes with it, there are aftermarket backup solutions. Bacup Exec and Acronis have some available.
3-ESXi may or may no upport your nic. Intel nics just work.
 
I recommend you check out Citrix xenserver.

Its free, its really fast, and its not as picky with hardware as VMware. "you do need Cpu visualization though"

At the end of the day you can try a few different hypervisor's and choose which one makes the most sense for your needs.

I do mostly tech work, studying, learning new products I can run 12 VM with little to no issues my biggest limiting factor will always be memory followed by disk speed.

My Server Specs.

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz
ASUS M4A78 Plus
1TB WD black
8 Gig Corsair memory
GeForce 8400 GS
antec 300 case
OCz fatality 550W psu
dvd Drive
 
mobilecommand said:
I recommend you check out Citrix xenserver.

Its free, its really fast, and its not as picky with hardware as VMware. "you do need Cpu visualization though"

At the end of the day you can try a few different hypervisor's and choose which one makes the most sense for your needs.

I do mostly tech work, studying, learning new products I can run 12 VM with little to no issues my biggest limiting factor will always be memory followed by disk speed.

My Server Specs.

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz
ASUS M4A78 Plus
1TB WD black
8 Gig Corsair memory
GeForce 8400 GS
antec 300 case
OCz fatality 550W psu
dvd Drive
Click to expand...

Put load on multiple machines and your disk will be your bottle neck guaranteed. With 8 gig of ram, your ram shouldn't be a bottle neck. I have a set of 640gig blue'sin raid 0 that I can choke on 1 vm. Disks are key for heavy vm's.
 
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