Amahi Virtualized

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bigfoot65
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Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:39 am

Hello,

I have been wanting to make my HDA virtual with Amahi for quite some time. While I understand the basics, I would like to ask for some help.

My current HDA setup is dual core processor, 4GB RAM, one 500GB, two 1TB, and one 2TB drive. I am using Greyhole and use my HDA mostly for DHCP, File, and some media server functions. I am also wanting to add PXE boot capability in the future.

What I need is to know whether to use Proxmox or ESXi for the base. Then I was hoping someone had some written guidance and how to put this all together. I hope to add the existing Greyhole drives to the VM and use them as I do today.

Can anyone help me? I think this configuration would be good to add to the wiki as well. I am willing to do all the work if I can get the info to build the tutorial.
ßîgƒσστ65
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My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

apastor
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Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 6:58 am

Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby apastor » Sat Dec 01, 2012 10:01 am

Hey Bigfoot

I plan on going VM's as well. As soon as I raise enough funds to build the server I want.

I plan on going promox myself. I did the zenserver and ESXi and I was never completely happy with either of them. promox was great.

As for Greyhole, I was never a fan of it from the get go. if your going VM's, I suggest your base for your HDD's be a RAID10 setup. My opinion, by going that route, you can ditch greyhole. All you will need is a backup solution. I myself Im planning on running a seperate single drive for my backups.

What I want to do is have RAID10 4x1TB drvies, and then 1 x 2TB drive for backups.

Also, everyone has different preferences on how to set things up.

I believe SgtFOO has hi amahi setup in proxmox already. I do not know if he uses greyhole though.

I know this is not a complete answer you looking for, but I thought I would share my opinion with you.
Proxmox Server: Currently Not Running Amahi
CPU: AMD FX 6100 Six Core
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: 4x1TB RAID10 (Adaptec)

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 10:22 am

Thanks for the response. I am still up in the air about RAID vs Greyhole. The nice thing about Greyhole is if I lose 1 or 2 drives, I still have one to rebuild from in the storage pool. I also can just take out a drive and all my files are there. I could then add it back to a physical server and lose no data. I can't do that with RAID.

I think the Amahi HDA on a VM would be better. Then I could have 2 HDAs, Ubuntu and Fedora. Pick which one I want to run and not have to spend time redoing the physical server. I don't think performance will be too bad, but won't know until I try it.

Hoping my hardware will be sufficient as I don't really want to spend more money. I just tried adding a physical drive to a Proxmox VM and it was easy. So that part should not be hard to replicate for Amahi.

The other cool thing about Proxmox and virtualizing Amahi is if I want to just run a basic file server with an OS, I can easily switch. I think this would be a good architecture to run at home, but need to get more install/setup guidance established.

Hopefully the experts can help us document this in the wiki for others.
ßîgƒσστ65
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My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

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sgtfoo
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby sgtfoo » Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:58 pm

What do you want to know?
what does your host hardware box have in terms of specs? The machine I use for the Proxmox host is in my signature below.. and it's overkill for a single server, but as soon as I want to run 4 windows machines and 6 linux machines at once, it can do it. The only thing I will see is disk i/o delays due to the limitations of 7200RPM drives. I was thinking of countering this with SSDs, but that's a few years and several $$$ away.


I've gone through a couple renditions of running Amahi in with Greyhole within a Proxmox machine.
Here's my setup in Proxmox for the Amahi Fedora machine as it has been for a few months now and quite stable...

QEMU/KVM machine... hardware:
prox-01.PNG
prox-01.PNG (22.81 KiB) Viewed 9344 times
-single core qemu64 CPU

and the disks are as follows:
virtio0 = OS disk image on prox local storage <--- inside the VM as /dev/sda1
virtio1 = LZ for greyhole (500GB) <--- inside the VM as /dev/sda2 ---> /var/hda/files
host disc1 = storage disk on prox hdd01 (2TB SG 7200RPM drive) <--- used as a greyhole drive --->/var/hda/files/drives/hdd01
host disc2 = storage disk on prox hdd02 (1.5TB WD 5900RPM drive) <--- used as a greyhole drive --->/var/hda/files/drives/hdd02

- the above virtio# are drive images on the local storage of proxmox (which is LVM storage)
- the host disc# above are the physical drives I mounted permanently to the machine. These are mounted as ide1 and ide3 to the VM

the 2 host discs needed to be added via command-line to the KVM from the proxmox linux CLI...as in

Code: Select all

qm set 100 -ide1 /dev/sdb1
... 100 is the VM number; ide# is what the VM sees; /dev/sdb1 is the drive that proxmox machine sees.

That addition of the exclusive drives to the VM was the tricky part initially because I added them before Proxmox 2.2 was released, as version 2.1 didn't have the option to add exclusive SATA or IDE drives from the web GUI.

I've had hiccups with getting the DLNA servers (miniDLNA or UShare) to show over the network to my PS3, but it does work when the PS3 sees them.

Before we go about writing wiki articles about it, I think a few more testers with Proxmox would be advantageous. If Amahi-team wants to open a virtualization wiki section I can start adding little initial setup steps, but definitive system setups tend to be on a per-user-needs basis.
Also, as many would already guess.. putting Amahi or any VM together for that matter is not for the new users or windows converts.
SgtFoo
HDA: VM inside oVirt FX-8300 95w (2 cores for HDA), 32GB RAM (2GB for HDA)
My PC: FX-8300, 16GB RAM, 3x 1TB HDDs, Radeon HD6970 2GB video; Win10 Pro x64
Other: PC, Asus 1215n (LXLE), Debian openZFS server (3x(2x2tb) mirrors)
Modem&Network: Thomson DCM475; Asus RT-AC66U; HP 1800-24G switch

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sgtfoo
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby sgtfoo » Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:17 pm

Oh, and networking should be explained too..

router sits at the common #.#.#.1

The proxmox box has the web console at
#.#.#.4 static IP, and knows the router and the Amahi DNS IP, the router DNS IP and a Google DNS IP.

my HDA still sits at
#.#.#.10 static IP, and knows the router and the DNS of the above.

I have a dual-port gigabit NIC in the hardware box to allow for additional load-off of net traffic to the router, mainly for all the other VMs; I give Amahi its own ethernet cuz it's a media/file-server... outlined in the image..
prox-net-01.PNG
prox-net-01.PNG (16.58 KiB) Viewed 9339 times
If you're trying to run both the Ubuntu and Fedora HDAs at once I get a feeling that unless you change what ports some of the apps run from, there may be conflicts.... as in I know for certain than my main HDA VM won't be seen as a media server on my PS3 if my Fedora 17 beta Amahi is running at the same time.
SgtFoo
HDA: VM inside oVirt FX-8300 95w (2 cores for HDA), 32GB RAM (2GB for HDA)
My PC: FX-8300, 16GB RAM, 3x 1TB HDDs, Radeon HD6970 2GB video; Win10 Pro x64
Other: PC, Asus 1215n (LXLE), Debian openZFS server (3x(2x2tb) mirrors)
Modem&Network: Thomson DCM475; Asus RT-AC66U; HP 1800-24G switch

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:54 pm

Awesome, that does help. What I intend to do is add my existing Greyhole drives to the VM, so I can add/delete them from it any time if needed.

I agree this is not something for newbies, but for more advanced users having a documented setup would be advantageous. As with anything in the wiki, it's just one users perspective. I am ok with that and want to get mine working similar.

I am gonna try to digest all this and see what I can come up with. Don't be surprised if I ask more questions :) In will also create a wiki page and add the "Advanced Users" tag to it. When you get time, please feel free to start adding documentation.

Thanks again!

UPDATE: Wiki page is http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Amahi_Virtualized
ßîgƒσστ65
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My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

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sgtfoo
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby sgtfoo » Sat Dec 01, 2012 4:58 pm

suggestion:

rather than outright "Amahi virtualization",perhaps tree-off the wiki to be

Amahi virtualization
---with virtualbox
-------- with greypool
-------- without greypool
---with Proxmox
-------- with greypool
-------- without greypool
---with VMware ESXi
-------- with greypool
-------- without greypool
---with OpenNode
-------- with greypool
-------- without greypool

As those are all opensource(free) options available to everyone, and the greyhole function is the primary game-changer with the setup.

I'll dive into the intro bits in the main 'virtualized' page and then fill in stuff for the proxmox section.
Always glad to add to this community.
SgtFoo
HDA: VM inside oVirt FX-8300 95w (2 cores for HDA), 32GB RAM (2GB for HDA)
My PC: FX-8300, 16GB RAM, 3x 1TB HDDs, Radeon HD6970 2GB video; Win10 Pro x64
Other: PC, Asus 1215n (LXLE), Debian openZFS server (3x(2x2tb) mirrors)
Modem&Network: Thomson DCM475; Asus RT-AC66U; HP 1800-24G switch

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:09 pm

Agreed. We can cover each and possibly make a page for each. Then use this main page for general stuff like hardware and link to the individual pages. We can also make a category called Virtualization that links all the pages together as well.

Appreciate your assistance. It's nice that we have folks like you who don't mind the work it takes to help others.
ßîgƒσστ65
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My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:17 pm

I failed to answer the questions about host hardware specs. I am gonna use my existing HDA box. It is as follows:

2.93GHZ Dual Core processor
4GB RAM
500GB IDE Drive -- currently OS and Amahi (LZ included)
1TB SATA Drive -- Greyhole (sdb)
2TB SATA Drive -- Greyhole (sdc)
1TB SATA Drive -- Greyhole (sdd)

It runs pretty well right now, so hoping it continues when I revert to a VM. I also plan on putting Proxmox on a 128GB SSD. I know I will not have room for the LZ, so that will end up being on a 500GB or 1TB drive depending on how many slots I have in the box. I have a DVD Writer in it now, but am thinking of removing it so I can keep all the drives.

I think I have adequate hardware, so if not please let me know so I can start searching for a replacement.
ßîgƒσστ65
Applications Manager

My HDA: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz on MSI board, 16GB RAM, 1TBx1+2TBx2+4TBx2

othey
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby othey » Sun Dec 02, 2012 4:54 am

I have been playing around with Esxi this weekend on an old amd x2 2.9Ghz 5GB RAM test bed, I plan on getting an AM3+ x8 FX-8120 and 16GB RAM for my final build. I plan on giving amahi 2 cores and 3GB ram. Then use the other cores/ram for the other vm's I plan on doing.

I managed to do a live convert of my current Hda to the esxi server minus the greyhole drives using vmware converter standalone client/server.

At first it wouldn't boot until I used a live cd of ubuntu-secure-remix-12.10 64bit and done a boot repair following this guide http://askubuntu.com/questions/139121/g ... -dual-boot

Now its booting it just gives me some errors about the greyhole drives at boot.I did have to change the IP and disable the dns dhcp server after it booted up so it wouldn't conflict with my current Hda.

I am not sure for my final build If I should do a live convert and re-add the greyhole drives after the conversion is done, Or do a clean install of Amahi and add the greyhole drives.

Anyone know the pros/cons of Esxi vs proxmox ?

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