Amahi Virtualized

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sgtfoo
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby sgtfoo » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:02 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 ?
The initial advantage I think Proxmox has over ESXi includes:
  • - no limit on hardware expansion (ESXi limits the cores/socket and the RAM per socket on the free version)
    - openVZ containers (Linux-only containers that use kernel-sharing and resource sharing on the host machine, to have several OS containers. There are limitations, but some people have reported up to 200 openVZ instances on a single hardware box)
If you want pros and cons, join the proxmox forums and the esxi forums and read up what people complain and praise about. It's a decent approach. If you need hands-on, run each hypervisor inside virtualbox .... yes a hypervisor inside a VM.. it will let you interact with it and decide if it's to your liking.
Last edited by sgtfoo on Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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sgtfoo
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby sgtfoo » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:11 am

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.
How many VMs do you think you'll want to ever run concurrently? ( because you may want to consider grabbing an inexpensive quad-core or more CPU while you can, maybe on boxing day sales or something)
Virtualization for multiple machines per core does work fine, but you may want to have spare horesepower in that regard

In any case, I would immediately suggest doubling your RAM. 32GB is overkill, but for anyone running mostly linux VMs, 8GB to 16GB is plenty to work with. Keep in mind, most hypervisors allow you to add/remove RAM allocation any time, with zero effect, except you must shutdown the VM when you do it.

Keep in mind, with Proxmox, it creates a LVM volume group for initial storage of drive images and containers. Every time you add a drive that won't be exclusive to a VM, it gets added to that LVM group. The effects of mixing SSD and HDD in an LVM may not be good (but they also may not be bad).. I would figure that a LVM will only work or deliver as fast as the slowest drive in the group... but I could be wrong. If I were in your shoes, I would save the cash from the SSD and just buy more RAM.
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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:26 am

How many VMs do you think you'll want to ever run concurrently? ( because you may want to consider grabbing an inexpensive quad-core or more CPU while you can, maybe on boxing day sales or something)
Virtualization for multiple machines per core does work fine, but you may want to have spare horesepower in that regard

In any case, I would immediately suggest doubling your RAM. 32GB is overkill, but for anyone running mostly linux VMs, 8GB to 16GB is plenty to work with. Keep in mind, most hypervisors allow you to add/remove RAM allocation any time, with zero effect, except you must shutdown the VM when you do it.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the HDA box is maxed at 4GB RAM. I may have to try and get another MB so I can use more RAM. Since it's so cheap, 16GB would not be too bad.

As for how many VMs, I plan on running 1 for Amahi of course and maybe 1-2 for testing and playing. Those would not be running all the time though, only for a few hours at a time. I do that now with Virtualbox on my desktop machine. Ironically my desktop is a quad-core machine with 16GB, so I guess I could switch them around too.

I was hoping to be able to run using the existing HDA, but sounds like that might not be an option.
Keep in mind, with Proxmox, it creates a LVM volume group for initial storage of drive images and containers. Every time you add a drive that won't be exclusive to a VM, it gets added to that LVM group. The effects of mixing SSD and HDD in an LVM may not be good (but they also may not be bad).. I would figure that a LVM will only work or deliver as fast as the slowest drive in the group... but I could be wrong. If I were in your shoes, I would save the cash from the SSD and just buy more RAM.
Well I already have the SSD, but guess I could sell it. It's not being gainfully employed, just sitting in a test box. The revenue from it could go towards a MB and RAM.

For now, I will keep researching and learning. My current physical HDA will suffice, but I do want to move to VM.

One more question. How do you handle the router with Proxmox and Amahi. I was thinking I could use DHCP on the router for 1 IP address (Proxmox) and then the Amahi VM would do DHCP for the network. Will that work or am I missing something.

Thanks again for your help! This is going to be a long learning and trial/error project for me it seems.
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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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:47 am

How many VMs do you think you'll want to ever run concurrently? ( because you may want to consider grabbing an inexpensive quad-core or more CPU while you can, maybe on boxing day sales or something)
Virtualization for multiple machines per core does work fine, but you may want to have spare horesepower in that regard

In any case, I would immediately suggest doubling your RAM. 32GB is overkill, but for anyone running mostly linux VMs, 8GB to 16GB is plenty to work with. Keep in mind, most hypervisors allow you to add/remove RAM allocation any time, with zero effect, except you must shutdown the VM when you do it.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the HDA box is maxed at 4GB RAM. I may have to try and get another MB so I can use more RAM. Since it's so cheap, 16GB would not be too bad.

As for how many VMs, I plan on running 1 for Amahi of course and maybe 1-2 for testing and playing. Those would not be running all the time though, only for a few hours at a time. I do that now with Virtualbox on my desktop machine. Ironically my desktop is a quad-core machine with 16GB, so I guess I could switch them around too.

I was hoping to be able to run using the existing HDA, but sounds like that might not be an option.
Keep in mind, with Proxmox, it creates a LVM volume group for initial storage of drive images and containers. Every time you add a drive that won't be exclusive to a VM, it gets added to that LVM group. The effects of mixing SSD and HDD in an LVM may not be good (but they also may not be bad).. I would figure that a LVM will only work or deliver as fast as the slowest drive in the group... but I could be wrong. If I were in your shoes, I would save the cash from the SSD and just buy more RAM.
Well I already have the SSD, but guess I could sell it. It's not being gainfully employed, just sitting in a test box. The revenue from it could go towards a MB and RAM.

For now, I will keep researching and learning. My current physical HDA will suffice, but I do want to move to VM.

One more question. How do you handle the router with Proxmox and Amahi. I was thinking I could use DHCP on the router for 1 IP address (Proxmox) and then the Amahi VM would do DHCP for the network. Will that work or am I missing something.

Thanks again for your help! This is going to be a long learning and trial/error project for me it seems.
My router's DHCP is off. I set the Proxmox machine to have a static IP and same with the HDA. You just need your router's IP and it's Subnet mask and DNS IPs and you can have them all connect. ..explained in the second post I made in this thread, in the screenshot.

why not use the SSD in your desktop? Fedora 18 boots like lightning on an SSD, and Windows 7 boots damn quick too!
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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:55 am

Thanks for the clarification. I have SSDs in all my desktops, so this one is an extra.

I guess where I went wrong with the networking was I did not point Proxmox to the ISP for DNS. I tried a test run last night and pointed it to the HDA which was wrong. It worked for a little while, then quit LOL
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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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 11:56 am

Thanks for the clarification. I have SSDs in all my desktops, so this one is an extra.

I guess where I went wrong with the networking was I did not point Proxmox to the ISP for DNS. I tried a test run last night and pointed it to the HDA which was wrong. It worked for a little while, then quit LOL
Think of it this way..
Your HDA could have downtime, and your proxmox cannot.
So for Proxmox, primary DNS would be the router; secondary DNS would be google and tertiary DNS would be the HDA.
On your primary HDA the primary DNS would be the router, the secondary DNS would be google.
Then all other client machines can use the HDA as the primary DNS, the router as secondary, and maybe Google as tertiary.

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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:32 pm

That makes sense. I will begin doing that on my router. You mentioned that adding physical drives to Proxmox adds them to LVM. Is there a way to add them without LVM? I just want to add the physical drives for Greyhole use primarily. Might use one for Proxmox backup of the OS and Amahi VM, but mostly for Greyhole.

I did not realize that when I added the drives the would become part of Proxmox storage. I only play on running 1 VM to use them for now.

Seems like there are a lot of pieces that will be nice to have documented in the wiki. I can hardly wait until the page starts forming :) I have started looking for a new MB, Processor, and RAM. I can get a MSI motherboard with AMD Quad-core processor and 16GB RAM for about $200. Microcenter has lots of bundles and then just have to add memory.

Would that be a good setup? Also thought about adding a second Network card, but not sure yet as to how I would use it. Just some thoughts as I try to piece this all together.
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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:17 pm

when you add a ext4 formatted drive to the machine, proxmox won't make it local LVM storage unless you tell it to. Upon booting you should be able to just add the drives from the GUI.

My 2 disks that I use for greyhole only show up as..

Code: Select all

user@prox:~# ls -l /dev/disk/by-label total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Nov 7 18:35 hdd01 -> ../../sdb1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Nov 7 18:35 hdd02 -> ../../sdc1 user@prox:~#
Here is what webmin tells me is physical in my machine
(device A and D were connected on install and became LVM'd; device B and C were connected after, formatted to ext4, and then I added them to the hardware of the Amahi VM)
webmin-partitions-01.PNG
webmin-partitions-01.PNG (18.38 KiB) Viewed 4708 times
......

Note that any drives you have connected inside the machine on installation of proxmox become LVM local storage inside "/var/lib/vz" - whichis seen in the GUI as "local" storage.

So the drives you want to use for exclusive VM pass-thru for greyhole need to be connected post-install of Proxmox. Then you can just map them directly when creating the Amadi-Fedora/Ubuntu VM.

I'll jump on the wiki for creating soon, I'm just a tad busy with other stuff at the moment.

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Virtualized

Postby bigfoot65 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:39 pm

Understand. I would not add them until later anyway. I am looking now for where to change the DNS server in Proxmox. I want to add my ISP, HDA, and Google DNS servers as your described.

I think I am starting to get a handle on things, just have to get it all done. Thanks again for taking the time to explain and work the wiki.

You will notice I have created a category called Virtualization. I have managed to find all the wiki articles for virtualization and linked them here.

I was also thinking I might use a free Dynamic DNS for Proxmox so I can access it from outside the network. Not sure how much of a security risk it is considered, but no-ip.org is what I have used in the past.
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 » Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:47 pm

Understand. I would not add them until later anyway. I am looking now for where to change the DNS server in Proxmox. I want to add my ISP, HDA, and Google DNS servers as your described.

I think I am starting to get a handle on things, just have to get it all done. Thanks again for taking the time to explain and work the wiki.

You will notice I have created a category called Virtualization. I have managed to find all the wiki articles for virtualization and linked them here.

I was also thinking I might use a free Dynamic DNS for Proxmox so I can access it from outside the network. Not sure how much of a security risk it is considered, but no-ip.org is what I have used in the past.
Perhaps best to avoid letting your proxmox OS from public internet access.

Click on your proxmox node in the tree, and then choose the DNS tab, then just fill in the DNS entries.

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