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Need advice about home virtual server...

B

brianbloom

n00b
Joined
May 18, 2014
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I'd like to tap into the community wisdom for some help in selecting a hypervisor platform.. I've gotten overwhelmed looking into KVM, ESXi, Xen, oVirt, OpenStack, OpenNode, OpenNebula, Proxmox, Ganeti, TheForeman, ConVirt, Cloudstack, etc. and realized I don't have time to explore all these different platforms through trial and error and could use some informed suggestions. I have nearly 30 years of computer experience (and built dozens of my own systems), just not much in the virtualization space.

Intended use: Purchasing a new machine for home use, already verified that CPU and MB support VT-x and VT-d (i5-4590s on Asrock Z87 Extreme 4 with 16GB DDR3 and onboard video if that's relevant). It will be used to host a few "constant" virtual machines - initially Ubuntu 14 and Windows 7/8 desktops, plus I'd like the ease of spinning up a few other servers for some of my coding projects - ideally making use of the Turnkey appliances. This is mostly for my own dabbling but I care more about using the systems than learning how to virtualize.

It would be nice to have a [graphical] dashboard for seeing and maintaining the instantiated VMs. Some of the tools I've looked at seem focused on automating provisioning and enterprise hosting, which is probably overkill for my home use.

Priorities:
- Easy of use/stable (vs bleeding edge/brittle)
- Free, and open source preferred if possible (vs commercial package)
- Run Ubuntu, Windows, and other turnkey VMs

A few opinions I've drawn so far:
- I presumed I would want some bare-metal hypervisor for performance, but it sounds like KVM can still do so even when installed in Linux.
- Virtualbox sounds like it is not as performant as other solutions.
- Not interested in Hyper-V or anything Microsoft related other than running one Win7 VM.
- ProxMox VE sounded interesting until I found their subscription fee for accessing stable builds.
- ESXi with its 60 day trial thing also gets demoted.

The closest fit seems to be something using KVM and possibly OpenVZ as well, either as a baremetal install, or perhaps on top of the Ubuntu install. But there are so many projects out there that leverage or combine these I needed some help finding the ideal one for my use.

I'd like something that is mature enough and has at least has a large enough user base that I can find answers to when I go looking for why my USB passthrough isn't working or whatever.

So, who can suggest a platform that fits the use case I've described? Many many thanks in advance...
 
ESXi is free, the 60 day trial is for vCenter, which is useful for managing multiple hosts, and managing some settings in ESXi 5.5. You can use ESXi 5.1 (which doesn't really need vCenter at all for single hosts), or ignore the features that require vCenter in 5.5 (which you may not need anyway).
 
Stick with XenServer, ESXi, or Hyper-V.

They are going to have the most support for turnkey appliances (especially ESXi), the best support resources online, and are overall very easy to setup and manage.

I have run all at one point in time, but currently run Hyper-V 2012 as I do a lot of work with Windows Guests.
 
+1 for staying away from open source virtualization offerings especially as novice because you will burn so much time to make it all work that it's literally not worth considering.

ESXi is free, the free version just can't be managed by vCenter, which doesn't matter in most cases because the overwhelming majority of the VMware value proposition assumes multiple hosts at which point the licensing fees are well worth the money.

Hyper-V is also a solid product, not sure why you would dismiss it in favor KVM (which isn't even in the same league as Hyper-V, though it is open source, but so what).

The whole "I want performance" is a romantic notion, but completely irrelevant it you are running a few VMs on a home server. Pretty much all the choices you listed will provide the performance you need because in comparison to production workloads you don't seem to actually need performance so you wouldn't know if you don't get it. ;)

Home lab performance often suffers due to lack of storage performance. Get a couple SSDs and you will be fine, they will outperform any low spindle count RAID setup.
 
Hypver-V 2012 Core is free from Microsoft and is a solid platform. Performance is great and there are some useful tools out there for management. Core means it is headless.
 
ESXi free version is good enough. Make sure your VM's HW compatibility level is 8 not 10 so can still use the latest and greatest ESXi 5.5.
 
The problem with 5.5 is that most onboard NICs do not work unless they are strictly Intel.
 
My reason for not wanting Hyper-V is that in general I don't run any Microsoft products. In fact, the only reason we're going to have a Windows VM at all is because my wife needs to access some training videos that apparently only work under Windows. Other than that I tend to live in "open source land".

@Thuleman - performance isn't that important to me but I figured if all other things are equal, then I'd rather go with a type 1 bare metal hypervisor than something running through the OS. But there's so many other variables too like robustness and usability. If performance really mattered to me, I probably wouldn't be getting the 4590S lower powered CPU and would get an i7 or at least an i5 that runs at full tilt.

@zerodamage - I've been checking to make sure that all the MBs I consider run the intel NIC. (In fact, I figured a Z87 with the Intel 217 was probably safer than the Z97 with an I218, as I figured it might take time for the newer NIC support to make it into the hypervisor images...)

It sounds like most people in here run either ESXi, Hyper-V, or, on the fringes, Xen. I'd hoped someone would be able to cut through all the various KVM flavors and suggest the best of breed there. But failing that, I guess I'll start with Xenserver and give it a whirl.
 
I don't think that you'll find a lot of Microsoft haters here. IT professionals (as opposed to OSS zealots) tend to be agnostic because as professional it's my responsibility to provide my organization with the best technology to accomplish the work for the least amount of expenditures (both capex and opex, and OSS tends to completely fail the opex test in great many cases, with some very notable exceptions of course). If I were to favor one technology over another for ideological reasons I would fail my employer.

Running the free version of ESXi or running Hyper-V will likely save you a lot of time.
 
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