Differences between virtualization services

[DyverTech]

I'm just getting into the whole virtualization scene but am hoping to get rid of a couple physical server installs at work and also set up something similar to the Gaming NAS that linus demonstrated for Unraid. The two goals are very different in what they have. An enterprise grade server vs a homebuilt gaming machine. 

 

My question is, I see a lot of different virtual controllers which I'm gathering are referred to as hypervisors or whatever their counter parts in other companies are called. My questions are; Do Vmware or any of the other similar ones to that feature a RAID system similar to Unraid's or would that be done on a RAID controller like our Perc H710 in the server? Also what would Unraid's formation be considered as since it has designated parity drives instead of all the drives sharing parity data? I still have yet to start this project and intend to dig around in each of them but was hoping to get some questions out of the way. 

 

Thanks in advance!

[jj9987]

Unraid is designed for file storage, but it also includes Docker containers and KVM virtualization (has KVM hypervisor).

 

Other hypervisors such as ESXi, Hyper-V, Xen etc do not have any such storage solution included. They will just save the VM image on the available space, but there is no redundancy included (correct me if I am wrong here).

[DyverTech]

14 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

Unraid is designed for file storage, but it also includes Docker containers and KVM virtualization (has KVM hypervisor).

 

Other hypervisors such as ESXi, Hyper-V, Xen etc do not have any such storage solution included. They will just save the VM image on the available space, but there is no redundancy included (correct me if I am wrong here).

So a RAID set up from one of those hypervisors would need to be set up on a hardware level or bios/uefi? Would running a VM with a linux distro allow a btrfs install and build a software RAID that the rest of the VMs could use? 

[leadeater]

VMware has options similar to unRAID but also can use remote storage and local storage.

 

VMware's equivalent to unRAID storage is vSAN, which requires 3 physical servers. vSAN pools the storage of physical servers to one logical storage bucket which becomes a datastore where you can store VMs on.

 

Other options for VMware are remote storage, which could be iSCSI, NFS or SAS, and local storage using traditional hardware RAID.

 

Microsoft Hyper-V is a bit closer to unRAID. You can use traditional hardware RAID or use Storage Spaces to pool directly attached storage in to a logical storage bucket which you then create virtual disks inside of. Storage Spaces can also pool storage across physical servers with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Windows Server 2016 required.

 

KVM is a little bit more of a wild card since almost any Linux storage option can be used, the danger here is you can configure a bad design more easily than Hyper-V or VMware but all of them are susceptible to this.

 

How many servers do you have? How many virtual machine are you looking at creating?

 

Here is an example setup for a school of around 1400 students and 150 staff, networking not shown.

 

Hardware:

• 3x Lenovo x3650 M5. Dual CPU, 64GB/128GB RAM, SAS HBA, USB VMware ESXi
• 1x Lenovo V3700 v2. 24 2.5", Dual SAS controller.
• 2x Eaton 9130 3KVa UPS

Software:

• VMware Essentials Plus

Virtual Machines (Base only):

• 2x Domain Controller
• 2x File Server (Staff & Student)
• 1x Print Server
• 1x Deployment Server (WDS)
• 2x Remote Desktop Server (Staff & Student)
• 1x Exchange Server (Replace with O365)

There would be more VMs than this, application servers and database servers, but those are pretty much ones that will be on every install for a client no matter the size.

[DyverTech]

16 hours ago, leadeater said:

VMware has options similar to unRAID but also can use remote storage and local storage.

 

VMware's equivalent to unRAID storage is vSAN, which requires 3 physical servers. vSAN pools the storage of physical servers to one logical storage bucket which becomes a datastore where you can store VMs on.

 

Other options for VMware are remote storage, which could be iSCSI, NFS or SAS, and local storage using traditional hardware RAID.

 

Microsoft Hyper-V is a bit closer to unRAID. You can use traditional hardware RAID or use Storage Spaces to pool directly attached storage in to a logical storage bucket which you then create virtual disks inside of. Storage Spaces can also pool storage across physical servers with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Windows Server 2016 required.

 

KVM is a little bit more of a wild card since almost any Linux storage option can be used, the danger here is you can configure a bad design more easily than Hyper-V or VMware but all of them are susceptible to this.

 

How many servers do you have? How many virtual machine are you looking at creating?

 

Here is an example setup for a school of around 1400 students and 150 staff, networking not shown.

 

Hardware:

• 3x Lenovo x3650 M5. Dual CPU, 64GB/128GB RAM, SAS HBA, USB VMware ESXi
• 1x Lenovo V3700 v2. 24 2.5", Dual SAS controller.
• 2x Eaton 9130 3KVa UPS

Software:

• VMware Essentials Plus

Virtual Machines (Base only):

• 2x Domain Controller
• 2x File Server (Staff & Student)
• 1x Print Server
• 1x Deployment Server (WDS)
• 2x Remote Desktop Server (Staff & Student)
• 1x Exchange Server (Replace with O365)

There would be more VMs than this, application servers and database servers, but those are pretty much ones that will be on every install for a client no matter the size.

Thank you for the write up! That's very informative. I'm guessing my desired configs are pretty simple compared to a larger deployment that a school would require. We have a simple single tower server that sits in a rack running a direct installation of Windows Server 2012. It handles a lot of the networking and file storage that goes on in the company. I would like to migrate that installation off a direct install and create a VM underneath it essentially on the same physical server. Just for the sake of being able to take snapshots and manage it with less sensitivity than working directly on everything. Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid but I would really like the safety net if I break anything on the server side I can just recreate an exact instance of it before I made changes without running through the whole backup restoration process. There wouldn't be virtual machines like users on thin clients or anything like that just the VM to house the Windows Server. I've messed with VMs through software like virtual box and was also wondering on the whole RAID side how it fits in to this scenario. I would also like to change the RAID array to something with some more fault tolerance as it's currently a nearly full RAID 5. So the capacity would need to be increased and I would like to move it to an SSD based RAID 10 but SSD isn't super necessary as we don't run apps off the server but faster larger file transfers and back ups would be nice. Please tell me if any of my logic in this is wrong as I'm very inexperienced in this type of thing but want to learn more. So the setup would be:

 

Dell PowerEdge T420 1TB boot drive

6-8 1-1.5TB drives in RAID 10 or similar config

VMware ESXi

VM (Windows 2012)

- AD & DC

- Network controller (Unifi) ((Will probably move to Unifi Cloud Key soon))

- File server

- Print server

 

Like I said, I don't think it's super complicated, I'm just wondering what would work best in my situation and allow for a more stable, simple layout. 

 

For the home setup I'm still working on exactly what the point of it all would be but I imagined beefing up my gaming rig a bit with a larger CPU better motherboard and better GPU and running unraid on it with a VM to run my Windows install so that I could still use it as a gaming PC but also have a NAS for other PC's in the house. I didn't know if it would be possible to start VMs remotely like on a media computer in the living room attached to the TV that could run a virtual instance of the gaming PC on the TV or if I just put the games in a storage container on the server and played from another OS. I still have some planning to do as I would need several upgrades to the gaming PC and am in the market for a new laptop that I'd like the ability to game on as well. It's all up in the air right now but I wanted to get a few things straight on what my intentions were and apparently it's very good to have experience with VMware on your resume in the IT field. 

 

Thanks again for your help! I'll continue my research and nail some things down and post again when I get closer! 

 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

@DyverTech

 

Thanks for the detailed reply, all the information required.

 

Yea what you plan to do is fine, I would make some minor changes. Use a RAID 1 datastore for the VM system disks, account for 100GB per OS, so 480GB will do the job nicely. Make sure you use proper server SSDs that feature power loss protection, Samsung PM863a 480GB or Intel DC S3510 480GB. You don't have to do this but SSDs certainly are nice.

 

For the larger 10k SAS disk array use RAID 6. With write-back cache + BBU it performs better than RAID 10 (bar one metric) and you can expand the array with more disks later where RAID 10 you cannot. This will work for just storing virtual disks for larger storage volumes or if you host everything on it including the VM system disks.

 

I agree with your reasoning to switch to VMs from physical OS install, snapshots really are nice and migrating to new hardware when the time comes is far easier.

 

Edit:

I think I just realized you were only planning on using a single VM. Windows Server Standard allows you to run 2 virtual instances with a single license and it's best practice to not run other services on a DC. Create 2 VMs and keep the DC standalone, you can also drop the SSD size down to reduce the cost.

[DyverTech]

@leadeater

 

Would you recommend using VMware then for that system or one of the others that was mentioned in my original post? In that system run 2 instances of Windows Server 2012; one with DC and the other handling the rest of the server duties? Does having two virtual systems effect how many CALs we need? I think we have extra for expansion purposes but want to make sure I'm all legal. 

 

 

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, DyverTech said:

@leadeater

 

Would you recommend using VMware then for that system or one of the others that was mentioned in my original post? In that system run 2 instances of Windows Server 2012; one with DC and the other handling the rest of the server duties? Does having two virtual systems effect how many CALs we need? I think we have extra for expansion purposes but want to make sure I'm all legal. 

I would use VMware ESXi, Hyper-V is another good option. Not really going to make much difference which you use.

 

For the CALs that should be covered already, wouldn't hurt to ask a local microsoft licensing partner.

[DyverTech]

@leadeater

 

Perfect, I'm setting up a test machine with ESXi to dig through it and test some it out as we speak! Thanks for your recommendations!

[DyverTech]

Well I can't seem to figure out how to delete a post and I accidentally posted the last one twice. So this is my change.