Upgrade From ESXi To KVM

[Carlosinfl]

We have a few servers running ESXi on some blades & they perform very well however I was looking at switching to KVM. I was wondering if there are any real significant performance gains from switching. Obviously if I was starting from scratch I would select KVM. I did some searching which roughly explains the key features of KVM but I really would like to know how much performance gain I would see moving off ESXi.

 

[NetJunkie]

I doubt you'll see any. ESXi is very efficient. If you're having performance problems look at your design, resources, and workload. Not the hypervisor.

 

[Carlosinfl]

No problems at all. VMware ESXi appears to be working fine but I just having been reading the benefits of KVM and wondered.

 

[ManateeMatt]

What benefits are you revering to? we are looking deploying ESXi or KVM and I want to make sure i made an informed decision

 

[Child of Wonder]

Going from ESXi to KVM is not an "upgrade."

As NetJunkie said, there are likely design flaws in your environment. I recently worked with a SMB client who wasn't happy with his VMware performance. Turns out his iSCSI network was set up poorly so there was no failover and all traffic was hitting a single SAN controller. Once I rewired things and enabled Round Robin all was well.

 

[/dev/null]

IT really depends what you want to do. The proxmox/ve distro of KVM is fantastically easy to setup & administer and if you know linux/debian you can build on that easily as well.

I tried vmware a while ago and was NOT a fan at all....

Another option:

Xen! Look into the FREE commercial xenserver product (very good IMHO) that has a windows point & click gui (xencenter) to manage it. There is also the free xen cloud platform 0.5 (need to know linux or roll your own management solution) or 1.0 beta (has xencenter integration).

 

[InCogneato]

I too am curious about those great features and benefits of KVM you're talking about. Please do enlighten us.

 

[Database]

What benefits are you revering to? we are looking deploying ESXi or KVM and I want to make sure i made an informed decision

I'm curious to see what benefits you are talking about as well. Revering? Seriously?

 

[LightningCrash]

What benefits are you revering to? we are looking deploying ESXi or KVM and I want to make sure i made an informed decision

Just to toss a couple out there:
It's a lot easier to provision on KVM.
You can discuss KVM's performance without being subject to stupid legal BS.


In a highly dynamic environment that doesn't mandate HA I would probably opt for KVM. In a more static environment requiring HA I would opt for VMWare.
ETA: That is to say, if you need KVM you will probably know it. Otherwise you're probably better off with VMWare.

 

[tonyb]

Just to toss a couple out there:
It's a lot easier to provision on KVM.
You can discuss KVM's performance without being subject to stupid legal BS.


In a highly dynamic environment that doesn't mandate HA I would probably opt for KVM. In a more static environment requiring HA I would opt for VMWare.
ETA: That is to say, if you need KVM you will probably know it. Otherwise you're probably better off with VMWare.

I'm not as familiar with KVM, how is it easier than ESXi? It's pretty stupid-easy in ESXi to provision, I can get a VM running in less than two minutes.

 

[LightningCrash]

I'm not as familiar with KVM, how is it easier than ESXi? It's pretty stupid-easy in ESXi to provision, I can get a VM running in less than two minutes.

and do you use a GUI to hand provision?

With KVM and virtinst it's absurdly straightforward to run a single command that will provision the VM hardware, provision storage, boot the VM and pass installation parameters to the installer. The commands are highly scriptable with little effort.

 

[tonyb]

and do you use a GUI to hand provision?

With KVM and virtinst it's absurdly straightforward to run a single command that will provision the VM hardware, provision storage, boot the VM and pass installation parameters to the installer. The commands are highly scriptable with little effort.

Yeah, I use the GUI for provisioning. You can do it via CLI too in ESXi, but I find the GUI quicker and easier for my purposes.

 

[OFaceSIG]

IT really depends what you want to do. The proxmox/ve distro of KVM is fantastically easy to setup & administer and if you know linux/debian you can build on that easily as well.

I tried vmware a while ago and was NOT a fan at all....

Another option:

Xen! Look into the FREE commercial xenserver product (very good IMHO) that has a windows point & click gui (xencenter) to manage it. There is also the free xen cloud platform 0.5 (need to know linux or roll your own management solution) or 1.0 beta (has xencenter integration).

+1 I use Xen in my datacenter for a lot of things to do not require HA. It's free, very high performing and probably the easiest damn thing to implement ever. (Especially from me and I've VERY light on the Linux experiance)