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Need advice on setting up virtual servers

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$trider

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 1, 2004
Messages
81
Hey and thanks for the help in advance,

I guess to get things started I'll give some info on my lack of skill level and intentions for the servers. I have some experience creating and using virtual machines with vmware player. I've created a couple virtual machines to play around on. I'm no networking guru. My network right now is modem--pfsense router--rest of network. I am self taught so cut me some slack hehe.

What I'd like to do is create a virtual server with servers on there for teamspeak server, occasional game server and a website for clan or something like that. I'm having trouble deciding what my hardware requirements for something like this are. I'm guessing I won't need that much since I won't be getting that much traffic. I don't want to over do it like I normally do. I am trying to stay under $400 for hardware. And I want to stay all open source on the software side.

I am not sure what OS to install on the machine for the base (hypervisor?) I've done some searching online but apparently I'm not using the correct terminology for my phrases. Most of the stuff I end up looking at is geared more towards industry. And that is definitely not me.

Anyways thanks for any help again
 
Thanks Vader,

I wasn't aware that ESxi was free. That would be nice to use since I'm sort of familiar with vmware player. Excuse me for my noobishness here but I have a couple questions that the ESxi faq page didn't really answer. So not sure if i have this right but.
  1. It's free and I can run as many guest OS's on it as I want
  2. I install ESxi on a formatted hard drive as the main OS?
  3. The only drawback is that I have to manage the guest OS's individually?
Sounds like a pretty much done deal for me there.
Would this be a good processor to build this kind of system around?
AMD Opteron 4130 Lisbon 2.6GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket C32 115W Quad-Core Server Processor OS4130WLU4DGNWOF
 
1. There is a free version of ESXi, basically barebones hypervisor. You can run as many guest OS's as your hardware can handle. The guest OS's are not free of course, unless your running a free Linux distro..etc.

2. For a small footprint you would install ESXi on a usb key, I personally use a 4GB key. You have to have some sort of storage shared or local on the box to house VM's, however. If internal, then you will need to use a supported hardware RAID card to create your datastore. If external, you can use a supported NFS, iSCSI..etc. roll your own or NAS box.

3. You would have to manage the Guest OS's individually yes but they can be manged via the vsphere client interface via console.etc.

That processor would work but that config that Netjunkie put together in the post I linked would be ideal, however you would need to buy storage. You can get a decent card, like a IBM 1015 that would work for you. Throw in a 3 drive RAID 5 and you're off.

Of course you could also check out the For Sale/Trade forums, there is still a lot of consumer type hardware that will also work fine with ESXi, you just have to do some research. I was using a Asus P6T/i7 920 combo and it worked great..but the onboard nics didn't so I had to purchase some intel nics.

The good thing about the post I linked that setup has support for the nics out of the box. I would go through the VMware lab specs post on the top of the page to get an idea of what is working for others. That may give you a good baseline to start with.
 
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I plan on running all open source stuff on there. Just started using it so trying to get better at it. I figure running a bunch of virtual machines like this is the perfect way to learn. I get to play with a whole bunch of different OS's and make them do something "useful" at the same time. In the case of the game server I get to give a little back in the process.

I had planned on using local memory. I was going to put this on a separate subnet? to keep it isolated from my other computers and file server. Does ESxi need to be installed on a separate drive? Can't I just put all this on one drive?

That build looks like exactly what I would need for this and right in the budget zone. Except for hard drives. I'm sure i can find a drive for around $40 or one laying around the house somewhere for this. Anyways thanks again for all the help here.
 
No..you can place it on a single drive and still have space allocated to VM's, but alot people put it on a USB key as it's such a small footprint and it's very easy to recover/reinstall.

You can go the single harddrive route, but just remember, that if you want to use a RAID setup, you have to get a Hardware RAID card that is supported by VMware. Onboard RAID, which is Software RAID is not supported and will not work.
 
Sorry for all the questions. Are the actual guest OS's (assuming guest os is correct terminology here) stored on the 4gb usb then? Or would they be stored on the local storage device? If ESXi and all the guests are on the usb then I guess that would be the way to go. It would be much simpler to just plug in another usb stick with working systems on there. That is pretty damn slick
 
$trider said:
Sorry for all the questions. Are the actual guest OS's (assuming guest os is correct terminology here) stored on the 4gb usb then? Or would they be stored on the local storage device? If ESXi and all the guests are on the usb then I guess that would be the way to go. It would be much simpler to just plug in another usb stick with working systems on there. That is pretty damn slick
Click to expand...

Nope, your guest OS installs are on a SATA drive, NFS server, iSCSI drive or one of a few other options. AFAIK, you can't load disk images off of a USB drive.

If you need everything together on a self-contained environment, consider using VirtualBox instead.
 
That's a bit of a bummer. I was getting all excited there. Making all kinds of usb drive plans in my head. Put Counter-strike server on one stick, TF2 on another...... wheels were turning. No longer turning. Why is there so little activity in this forum? I figured this being Hardocp everyone would be all over this. I mean you have unlimited tinkering capabilities and nothing to lose. You can try out every operating system you ever wanted to. You can make massive virtual networks (hardware permitting of course) and try out anything. Don't like the results......erase the vm's and start over. Glad I found out about this and thanks for all the help and suggestions in here.
 
$trider said:
That's a bit of a bummer. I was getting all excited there. Making all kinds of usb drive plans in my head. Put Counter-strike server on one stick, TF2 on another...... wheels were turning. No longer turning. Why is there so little activity in this forum? I figured this being Hardocp everyone would be all over this. I mean you have unlimited tinkering capabilities and nothing to lose. You can try out every operating system you ever wanted to. You can make massive virtual networks (hardware permitting of course) and try out anything. Don't like the results......erase the vm's and start over. Glad I found out about this and thanks for all the help and suggestions in here.
Click to expand...

That's not really how ESXi works though. There's no (supported) way to directly access 3D cards in the host machine, so you wouldn't want to put games on there. All of the other stuff you are talking about has already been possible with sandboxed VM environments (Virtualbox, Parallels, VMWare Workstation, etc.) for years, without having to deal with the hassles of remote management.

EDIT: Just realized you were talking about the game SERVERS, not clients. My bad. The stuff I said about sandboxed VM environments still holds true and seems like it might be more of what you are looking for. Also, performance for running multiple VMs off a single USB bus would be poor at best.
 
Yeah I kinda wondered about that. Once usb 3.0 gets out there a little more that might change i guess. What exactly is sandboxed VM? Not really familiar with that term. This is just my hobby so sorry for the ignorance here.
 
$trider said:
Yeah I kinda wondered about that. Once usb 3.0 gets out there a little more that might change i guess. What exactly is sandboxed VM? Not really familiar with that term. This is just my hobby so sorry for the ignorance here.
Click to expand...

Just Virtual Machines that run at the same time as a host OS. (Where the host OS is a full-featured OS like Windows 7 instead of a bare-metal hypervisor like ESXi)

You can get Virtualbox for free and start playing with it right now: http://virtualbox.org
It supports 3D acceleration, images on USB drives, complex networking setups (especially if used in conjunction with something like pfSense) and most of the other stuff you mentioned.
 
CEpeep said:
Just Virtual Machines that run at the same time as a host OS. (Where the host OS is a full-featured OS like Windows 7 instead of a bare-metal hypervisor like ESXi)

You can get Virtualbox for free and start playing with it right now: http://virtualbox.org
It supports 3D acceleration, images on USB drives, complex networking setups (especially if used in conjunction with something like pfSense) and most of the other stuff you mentioned.
Click to expand...

That sounds like what I am doing now with vmware player? I wasn't aware that this was sandboxing? hehe actually I have no idea what sandboxing is period. I have heard the term used in articles where people are working with viruses and what not. Is virtualbox different than vmware player (obviously it is but functionally don't they perform the same operation)? Once again sorry about all the questions but the subject is a bit confusing. Sometimes I feel like I'm in that Inception movie when I get into this. Take a look at this paragraph from the ESXi FAQ. I believe this is supposed to help clarify.... didn't help me much.

How do I use VMware vCenter Server to manage my VMware vSphere Hypervisor hosts?
VMware vCenter Server provides centralized management for VMware vSphere Hypervisor hosts and their virtual machines. To manage a VMware vSphere Hypervisor host with vCenter Server, you must have a vCenter Server Agent license, which is included in all paid editions of VMware vSphere.

lotta V's in there
 
Virtualbox is similar to VMWare Player at a base level, but lacks alot of the functionality you were interested in, especially on the networking front. Virtualbox also has a more robust management front-end (similar to the vSphere client), as opposed to VMWare Player which has almost no management functionality. You can sandbox in both of them, but both ESXi/vSphere and Virtualbox offer you much more powerful interfaces for doing so than VMWare Player does.

In ESXi/vSphere, there is no built-in software for managing your VMs. Management (adding new VMs, changing settings, turning VMs on/off, etc.) are all done from a remote computer running the vSphere client. For some applications, this makes ESXi needlessly complicated, and for others its a godsend. Either way, using a more full-featured platform than VMWare Player is going to help you learn the ropes of virtualization, regardless of how you end up putting it to use.
 
As you can see it's not free. vSphere is the total solution, vCenter w/ESXi Hypervisor, etc...but the paid editions.

You would manage free ESXi w/ the vSphere client. I know it's a bit confusing but that's how it is. The reason why it's not free is vCenter provides a lot more functionality etc like Distributed switching..etc.

If you want a stand alone Virtual environment, then go free ESXi and manage it with the free client. Install it on a USB Key, that's your OS now. Install a drive like you said..spend the $40 or if you have one laying around use that. It will show up in the client under storage. You can then provision VM's on that datastore.

If you want Redundancy/protection against drive failure, you need either a shared storage device that supports that and you can connect via iscsi or NFS or you need to install a hardware RAID card in the system and create your Volume which again, will show up as a datastore in the vsphere client.

If you want to share and don't care about dedicated VM's, then you can do what CEpeep suggested and get the software on your current machine (as long as it's supported) and setup VM's there.
 
I'm definitely not going to pay anything for this (money wise). This is purely an educational experience for me. Managing the VM's individually is not a problem for me. In fact I think I would prefer a more hands on approach to doing it. Usually the more pain = more learning equation applies to these sorts of operations.
 
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