Running vm's on server.

[corruptedButterlfy]

Hello guys

 

I have a lot of VM's spread over 2 computers and wanted to collect them on my server. Now I don't just want to store the files on my server but actually run the VMs on this server (so the VM's would use the CPU and ram from the server).

As virtualization software, I'm using VMware. The only way that I know/have found to do this is if I set up my server as an ESXi host.

My server is currently running Debian and I have already installed a few things on it so I don't really want to change the Os to ESXi.

 

A solution I was thinking of running ESXi in a docker container but even if this is possible will this solution not extremely hurt the performance of the VM's?

Do you guys know a better solution or has anyone tried this and know a guide that I can follow to achieve this? 

 

Information about the server:
OS: Debian 10

CPU: 2x Intel® Xeon® Processor X5650

Memory: 9*8GB 1333MHz (72GB)

storage: Currently I have 1 SSD (128GB) and 3HDD's(500GB each)  in the system. The SSD is in raid 0, and the 3 HDD's are in raid5.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Electronics Wizardy]

esxi is. os, you can't run it in a container.

 

 

Id move the current debain install to a vm, and then install debian on the host, or move to a different hypervisor

 

How re you using raid? Esxi doesn't support software raid

[Jarsky]

You could use VMWare Workstation Pro...it is $250 for the licence though, compared to ESXi which is free. If you need Debian you could then just P2V that using VMware Converter.  You can use VMWare Converter to migrate VM's from other VMware ESXi / Workstation / Fusion instances as well, its a really powerful tool. 

[LtStaffel]

you can't run esxi in a container, you need a different hypervisor. Since you already have Debian, Redhat's KVM (virt-manager package) is exactly what you need and will do a great job. It installs on top of Linux and can run many VMs with minimal overhead.

[nook24]

I use Proxmox. Its free and open soruce and runs on Debian. https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve

At work I have build a 7 Node Cluster with ZFS. At home I have Proxmox installed on my HTPC + KDE as GUI.

 

You can check out my blog series about Proxmox: https://daniel-ziegler.com/categories/proxmox-ve/ (german but i guess Google Translate will handle this)

[WereCatf]

On 8/24/2020 at 12:58 AM, corruptedButterlfy said:

Do you guys know a better solution

Instead of VMware, use KVM (via libvirt) for your VMs? That's what I do on my Ubuntu-servers.

[corruptedButterlfy]

First of all, thank you guys for all your helpful responses.

 

I think I'm going to use KVM for my virtual machines but damn proxmox is looking very nice.

 

 

[Jarsky]

If you're going down the KVM path and want a web interface, i'd recommend checking out Cockpit: https://cockpit-project.org/

 

[nook24]

Proxmox is also using KVM and can be installed on existing Debian systems - in case you don't want to reinstall your system. But I only used the "Proxmox VE ISO Installer" to setup my production systems.

[cloneman]

VMware workstation (on windows)  does allow for things like autostart and autopause on shutdown, so it can sort of act like a server.