Considering moving over to VM based setup, some questions

[Mayaa]

Hi!

 

I've been planning on moving my current setup, which is just a linux debian setup, and move over to some kind of hypervisor, and just turn it into a VM pretty much.

However i do have some questions, the first one would be which hypervisor should i go for? my plan is to just have my server as it is already, just as a VM instead, and then have the ability to start up a windows VM if i need something that cant be run on linux. I havent really looked into hypervisors too much outside of hyper-v

The second concern is that i have a linux software raid setup for my storage, will i be able to mount that in the VM ?

 

[barondeau]

VMware has served me well in the past and has a lot of options that you might want to look into, like exact sets on storage, ram, cores, etc

[AbsoluteFool]

17 hours ago, Mayaa said:

Hi!

 

I've been planning on moving my current setup, which is just a linux debian setup, and move over to some kind of hypervisor, and just turn it into a VM pretty much.

However i do have some questions, the first one would be which hypervisor should i go for? my plan is to just have my server as it is already, just as a VM instead, and then have the ability to start up a windows VM if i need something that cant be run on linux. I havent really looked into hypervisors too much outside of hyper-v

The second concern is that i have a linux software raid setup for my storage, will i be able to mount that in the VM ?

 

You got serval options for hypervisor based on what hardware or server you have. The go to mostly is ESXI. Then my guess would be proxmox that serval on this forum recomends (Personally i don't like it, but each for their taste.) You can use Virtualbox as command line althought it would still be a type 2 hypervisor. Other than that there is KVM which is command line. Or XCP-NG a new fork of XenServer that aparantly looks very nice.

 

Existing RAID configurations will workd on hypervisors. Hypervisors do not include any form of ZFS or raid features to my knowledge. So a RAID set-up is prefered.

[Razor Blade]

5 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

You got serval options for hypervisor based on what hardware or server you have. The go to mostly is ESXI. Then my guess would be proxmox that serval on this forum recomends (Personally i don't like it, but each for their taste.) You can use Virtualbox as command line althought it would still be a type 2 hypervisor. Other than that there is KVM which is command line. Or XCP-NG a new fork of XenServer that aparantly looks very nice.

 

Existing RAID configurations will workd on hypervisors. Hypervisors do not include any form of ZFS or raid features to my knowledge. So a RAID set-up is prefered.

ESXI doesn't include RAID or ZFS functionality but I believe ProxMox has the ability to use ZFS.

 

I use ESXI as a hypervisor and a FreeNAS VM to manage disks. I still have a RAID controller that mirrors the drives for the VM data stores and the boot files for ESXI. FreeNAS takes care of iSCSI drives, shares, and data archive.

[Mayaa]

23 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

You got serval options for hypervisor based on what hardware or server you have. The go to mostly is ESXI. Then my guess would be proxmox that serval on this forum recomends (Personally i don't like it, but each for their taste.) You can use Virtualbox as command line althought it would still be a type 2 hypervisor. Other than that there is KVM which is command line. Or XCP-NG a new fork of XenServer that aparantly looks very nice.

 

Existing RAID configurations will workd on hypervisors. Hypervisors do not include any form of ZFS or raid features to my knowledge. So a RAID set-up is prefered.

I dont really have a "real server" so to say, it's just consumer parts serving the server role.

I'll look into compatability though since i use a i7 4670k but i would assume the hypervisors arent super picky.

 

And that's good about the raid array, i dont really have any solutions to move my existing one over so if i just can mount it again that would be great.

[dalekphalm]

On 10/22/2018 at 12:41 PM, Mayaa said:

I dont really have a "real server" so to say, it's just consumer parts serving the server role.

I'll look into compatability though since i use a i7 4670k but i would assume the hypervisors arent super picky.

 

And that's good about the raid array, i dont really have any solutions to move my existing one over so if i just can mount it again that would be great.

Apparently ESXi is a bit picky on your hardware, but I've personally never had any issues. I'd suggest test installing multiple different Hypervisors to see what ones work, and of them, which you prefer.

 

Proxmox should run on just about anything, since it's basically Linux with a nice UI for managing VM's. FreeNAS, likewise, will also run on most setups, as long as the hardware isn't particularly exotic or rare.

[Mayaa]

12 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Apparently ESXi is a bit picky on your hardware, but I've personally never had any issues. I'd suggest test installing multiple different Hypervisors to see what ones work, and of them, which you prefer.

 

Proxmox should run on just about anything, since it's basically Linux with a nice UI for managing VM's. FreeNAS, likewise, will also run on most setups, as long as the hardware isn't particularly exotic or rare.

 Proxmox looks nice, i might give that a go to start with.

[NtnxSwe]

Nutanix has a build-in hypervisor called AHV or Acropolis. https://www.nutanix.com/products/acropolis/virtualization/
On the same page you will find Try it Now button, where you can download Community Edition Software and try it. 

[alex75871]

5 hours ago, NtnxSwe said:

Nutanix has a build-in hypervisor called AHV or Acropolis. https://www.nutanix.com/products/acropolis/virtualization/
On the same page you will find Try it Now button, where you can download Community Edition Software and try it. 

I have never heard of that hypervisor before

[leadeater]

17 hours ago, alex75871 said:

I have never heard of that hypervisor before

It's a KVM fork but the actual main smarts of Nutanix runs over top of the Hypervisor which is why they support ESXi and Hyper-V, but only on the paid versions. The free Community Edition is AHV only.