ProxmoxVE 3.0 Cluster

[mudmanc4]

After several years on and off, learning console commands for openvz, getting frustrated with the ever changing and problematic clustering of HN's , I've found a sweet spot, proxmox.

Nothing I have used , have worked this flawless and stable, of course ESXi is something I've only dabbled in , where vspere is costly, proxmoxVE is open to the public much in the same way RHEL / centOS is.

As an example:

At the moment I've move the minecraft server into a VM, allocated 2 CPU's and 2GB ram, where previously mines Crux used 4 CPU's and 8 GB ram, now running virtually with less than half core resources, no complaints from the users either. Of course the new minecraft server is turnkey, which all together simply outperforms crux ten fold, at least in this environment.

Getting started on migrating windows server 2008 on the second node, which of course should be a blast in itself, but hey it's windows, so we'll deal with the overly complicated malarky.

On another note, you can either create a VM or CT, openvz will use KVM and as always CT's can only use openVZ kernels. None the less installing windows7 as a VM is a breeze, I was amazed at how the system automatically sets up the bridge and virti0 interfaces, duh-me ? Simple and easy. With a plethora of templates instantly downloadable, proxmox is king at the moment in my eye's.

You might be thinking 'sounds like proxmox has taken all the control out of your hands and automated it , just the opposite actually, don't expect to image and run , you'll need to do a bit of background on basic usage. proxmox here and now is combining the best of todays virtual solutions into one UI that rivals the best, in fact they use the best, built on the very same technology as the best.

Five out of five stars Proxmox 3.0 !!!!

BTW , support is the least costly of anything that comes close , well , nothing really comes close at the moment. For less than 10US/ month if you choose. Amazing !!!!!

[CA3LE]

Smart people might think that's an affiliate link... but I assure you it's a testimonial.

[mudmanc4]

Exactly.

 When something changes my daily life technology wise, as so many items have, it's difficult to think I won't give them a boost.

 

Life is interesting, the only way I found proxmox is due to my youngest son, yes , minecraft. You say wth is he talking about ?

After years of not messing with minecraft myself, which came after assisting as much as anyone could during the initial phases of the game, my son started in with it so I hear " dad -- daddd ' I heard you can have your own minecraft server ' , yes well you can, you get all A's for the year and take all honors classes in jr high , stay in tuba and join marching band and I'll do it.

 

Thats the story. Still don't get it ? After playing around with just about every piece of equipment i have around here , tweaking everything and even trying on a paid VPS, all but poor performance. Hence mineos crux. Hands down lightest wieght specialized server os I have found. Done , right ? Not me ..

 

Dedicate a whole machine around here for a game server no , I was not happy. What a waste. Virtualize it! Back to openVZ it was , but dammit I don't spend enough time to keep up let alone remember what I did last time i managed an HN.

 

Thats the story, so affiliate would be the youngest boy yea, he gets the credit. Now when he hits bandcamp in a week + I still have plenty of machine left for what I need / want to do, while the MC server sits mostly idle, and were lugging him and a sousaphone around this part of the state for football games.

 

Iv'e not yet mapped a dyn domain name to it yet, but if anyone plays, your more than welcome to, but I must say, one mess up and poof banned, hell I've spent days building up and so have a couple others, I'de hate to see someone come in and be a pin head lol

 

I should add , at this point you still need to setup your cluster through the command line, which has changed a bit, none the less, remarkably easy to setup, migrate, backup, snapshots, ect and control all nodes through one interface.

Smart people might think that's an affiliate link... but I assure you it's a testimonial

[nanobot]

I use Xen for virtualization myself. It's extremely powerful and provides a hardware virtualization platform unlike OpenVZ. Where OpenVZ virtualizes the program platform, Xen virtualizes the entire OS. It's actually pretty neat stuff.

I've been trying to get a good benchmark of a Minecraft for a couple days now, and with Xen that is very possible. You can change the quantity of Virtual CPU's allocated to a VM with three commands, command one shuts the VM down, command two changes the CPU count, command three restarts the VM. You can even change how much RAM is available to the VPS on the fly. Technology is becoming very intense now-a-days.

One of the coolest things I like about Xen is that you can easily migrate a VM from one machine to another machine while it's running.

Hell, in this past week I've virtualized a virtualization platform. I have Xen running on a box inside Virtual Box on my computer, because I don't have the resources to dedicate to performing all this.

So it seems there are quite a few different options for Virtualization. I guess it all depends on what the End-User requirements are.

Thanks,

EBrown

[mudmanc4]

Xen is popular for sure , it was a hell of a show watching the discussions over the last several years as RHEL purchased the company that made it , then linux as a standard kernel went to KVM. 

 

You can live migrate with a cluster on proxmox, change hardware allocation ect on the fly, VM's as well as KVM, although I have not succeeded in migrating an openVZ container just yet.

 

As for openVZ, I'm in love with turnkey linux, working on creating  backuppc version at the moment. I have one running locally, Ibeing this is my first one , I need to do a lot more study before thinking of releasing it.

[nanobot]

Well I need the Console Support that Xen has, I can do anything and everything through the console, which is necessary for me as I plan to integrate a website with the Xen system so that people can purchase them and they will auto-provision. The programmer should be starting on the work for it soon, and so I'll need to give him exactly what commands need executed and such. I am hoping to start my own virtualization hosting company with the goal of providing the cheapest possible solution for my clientbase. This includes using whatever virtualization software will allow me to create the solution in the most elegant way, which is looking to be Xen.

Unless you can show me that proxmox has a command-line set that can be used with it, I don't think it's what I, personally, need from a Virtualization Software. It looks far too GUI based for me. I am liking this CLI stuff much better.

Thanks,

EBrown

[mudmanc4]

I sincerely respect you sticking to the command line. Several aspects of virtualization require it.

 

However in the end , your creating a GUI for the end user, which you will need to access sections of if any type of financial automation will be required as well. (paypal - banking ect
) Sure you can program in API's for some apsects. If your going to do this , then whcms / hostbill ect will accomplish that, building your customised application over that.

 

I did not start the thread to sway anyone towards proxmox, nor start a big balls match on who can do what in a shell, yet simply to show what free (open source) software is becoming. The software takes the lastest and most useful technologies and combines then as a whole. Usable to those that have not had technical schooling, yet hobbyists and enthusists the same.

 

Virtualization is ever evolving, if this is ones field , they must be nearly completely commited to the technology, attending the various seminars held annually as well as monthly, and continuence of education regarding it.