Virtualized servers

[electron]

The Dell T110 was one of those hot deals 2 months ago (paid around $300). While they do advertise 2 NIC ports, it only came with 1 (still dealing with Dell support, but they are not much help). Besides that, I am very happy with the system, and I am sure it will pay for itself pretty quick once I shut down the old systems.

There is software out there which can take real time backups of virtual machines, but none of it is free. VMWare is actually telling companies to not support the free ESXi version anyways. I am using Acronis in the actual VM environment, and schedule a weekly backup (full snapshot) directly dumped onto my NAS.

I also use SyncBackPro to backup critical data on a daily basis to that same NAS. I feel this covers almost all angles, but I might also move my critical VM image to my NAS using iSCSI (so the entire guest is on a RAID5 disk set), I just need to do some more testing (looking promising so far tho).

 

[drozwood90]

Awesome Dan, keep us posted! I know What you are doing is what I've postulated doing for a long time...esp. moving everything off to a NAS...

If you can do that, it disassociates the SW from the HW...which means ANY issues with HW...just move to different HW and you are good to go!

--Dan

 

[rwarshawski]

What are you guys using these virtual machines for?

bob

 

[felixrosbergen]

So it seems we have several people with virtualization experience in the thread.

I am pretty close to starting to move towards it. My questions is should i take images using VirtualBox Snapshot tool or Acronis within the Guest OS? I am just curious which would be faster/easier.

Does a VM has to be shutdown to take a snapshot in VirtualBox?

Also for those that take a 'bare XP machine' image as a base to build other machines. Do you then have to replace the serial? How does that work? I have MS Technet so have access to sufficient keys and such. Should i setup a bare XP and then image it before activation/putting in the XP key?

Current my host os is XP 32 bit. I want to change the host OS to XP64bit in order to run more RAM. Then run an XP Guest for CQC and an XP Guest for Nuvo Music Port. Maybe a 3rd MS Windows Server 2003 guest if i want to.

My plan is to use virtual box under the XP32bti guest and made the VM's. Then save the VM's away and install XP64 bit, bring the VM's back and presto...sounds easy enough i suppose..

The guest OS would run SageTV directly since others have been having issues virtualizing it.

Any comments/advice on my plan would be appreciated. I don't know Linux at all...so thats not an option.

From what I understand it's possible to make Virtual Box VM's start when the Host OS starts and run headless to reduce the overhead.

I will need to be doing some USB passthrough for a USB soundcard (for the Nuvo Music Port) and possibly another sound card for TTS in the CQC machine.

 

[swaggy]

I will need to be doing some USB passthrough for a USB soundcard (for the Nuvo Music Port) and possibly another sound card for TTS in the CQC machine.

MavRic,

I plan to build a whitebox ESXi server using Intel's DQ45CB motherboard. The onboard audio has been reported as available for passthrough to the VM so you don't need a USB soundcard for your MusicPort VM.

http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php...=88&start=0

I plan to virtualize my MusicPort as well in addition to MythBuntu and my FreeBSD mail/web server. The only thing I'm not sure of at this point is how to get rs-232 serial ports in the VM.

 

[kwilcox]

USB passthrough is available on vSphere (ESXi v4.0). I've not tried it since I haven't upgraded my infrastructure yet. Serial port mapping is simple and can be found in the VM hardware settings. I ran my entire house on a VM for a while but recently moved over to a low power PC to improve overall response and reliability.

 

[twilo123]

i haven't used esxi but use regular esx 4.0 which as stated requires 64 bit (+ 2GB memory). if you have 32bit 3.5 is the latest version to use. USB passthrough works fine from the vm, console session on vsphere, etc. you just have to connect it like you do with any vm. haven't tried serial ports though. you could probably always use usb to serial adapter if need be though.

 

[elcano]

I have customer with a mission critical Windows application which was running in a laptop. They also had need of a server which could be satisfied with a Linux box at a affordable price. Therefore, we got a good HP server with RAID, doble Power Supply and triple network card and ran VM with Windows 7 with the critical application on it. Now this app is running 24/7 and pretty safe. They also have file server, proxy server, VPN, and application server provided by the host Linux OS.

I did notice a performance hit in Windows 7 if you dont disable all the graphic bell and whistles. Also, in any case I would recommend using an Intel Server network adapter instead of the cheap Realtek ones (if your host OS is Linux). The lastest Intel Gigabit ET Server Network adapters argues to be optimized for virtualization, but I have not tested them.

What are you guys using these virtual machines for?

bob

 

[felixrosbergen]

I plan to build a whitebox ESXi server using Intel's DQ45CB motherboard. The onboard audio has been reported as available for passthrough to the VM so you don't need a USB soundcard for your MusicPort VM.

I think ESXi is a bit above my skill level so it is not going to be an option for me. I just finished testing a Creative X-Fi USB 5.1 Audio device...it sort of working..but was causing very high CPU on the host and abotu 1 out of 3 times caused the host to BSOD when the VM was turned off (equivalent of plugging the USB device in the host i guess). Online searching shows the high CPU to be sort of a known issue so it's not really virtualization related. Interestingly enough the high CPU loads occurred on the host and not on the guest. Other users who ran the device in a non virtual environment reported high CPU loads as well. I was expecting the high CPU load to occur in the guest and not the host, but i guess it depends on where some of the processing is done for the USB devices.

I am not hunting for a different USB audio device to test as I have not given up. The MP is fickle enough that i don't want it running on my host.

 

[sbwright]

Realize this is a somewhat old thread, has anyone made any progress in solving the sound card issue in ESXi or other VM software?

 

[electron]

I am using a cheap USB soundcard, originally I used the PCI passthrough feature, but now that the latest version of ESXi supports USB passthrough, I am using it that way, without any issues.

 

[sbwright]

Thanks Dan, I am trying to condolidate some machines with the hopes of getting Homeseer and SqueezeCenter running in a VM. However getting a sound card thru ESXi has been a challenge, can you share your your model/version?

 

[electron]

I purchased the Syba SD-CM-UAUD USB Stereo Audio Adapter from Amazon. It seemed to be the most compatible in that price range. I am using it with a HomeSeer PRO VM as well.

 

[sbwright]

Thanks again, ordering one up

 

[Shinyshoes]

I know this is an old thread, but for what it's worth I am using Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and love it. I am using software to pass through USB and Serial ports to virtual guest machines and I am having great success.

You can read more on my blog posts: If the shoe fits

Specifically this post: Tying it all together