Hello,
Long time no post :)
Time for another crazy idea of mine.
In an effort to help part-fund my shiny new dual core dedicated server (some of it's already funded by a web site I run), I'm contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up into several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those wishing to experiment, host their own sites, or whatever. Suggested charging for 128Mb VM would be around the £25 per month mark. However, before I do ANY of that, I want to try different distributions with different applications and thus if anybody is interesting in testing such a beastie, I would be very grateful. Initally I'm looking to offer Debian and CentOS (4.x). Each VM would be equal share CPU.
If anybody is interested, please can you drop me an email off-list.
Regards,
Martyn
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk
contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up into =20 several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those =20
I suggest considering Xen if the hardware and application permits. Seems to have a lot less overhead and is really quite popular.
On Wednesday 26 April 2006 07:27, MJ Ray wrote:
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk
contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up into =20 several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those =20
I suggest considering Xen if the hardware and application permits. Seems to have a lot less overhead and is really quite popular.
I second this. It takes a bit of work to get right but once done it rocks.
Andy Trevor wrote:
On Wednesday 26 April 2006 07:27, MJ Ray wrote:
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk
contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up into =20 several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those =20
I suggest considering Xen if the hardware and application permits. Seems to have a lot less overhead and is really quite popular.
I second this. It takes a bit of work to get right but once done it rocks.
This link can get you going in about 5 minutes. http://www.option-c.com/xwiki/Xen
We are already testing the latest and greatest, and been offering the above setup (with some mods) to a few existing customers.
Its worked really well, I have used it on a few DNS machines to split up the DNS/mail backups etc..
With rackprices having shot up recently its perfect (Although power has gone up as well so the dual processor machines dont look so good now)
Darren
I have yet to upgrade to v3 of xen, but v2 xen is good provided you dont do to much IO, as duel tar.gz XEN installs while running one or more xen image has caused kernel instability in my experiance. I think xen is the future, I think your expected fee's are too high and could only be justified by promising some ISP grade bandwith.
Sorry to poor water on the fire, but xen is good but day to day constent use shows IO is still a little unstable so its not rearly ready for production like RHES or debian stable.
Have fun and good luck
Regards
Owen
On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:07:53 +0100 Darren darren@darrencasey.co.uk wrote:
Andy Trevor wrote:
On Wednesday 26 April 2006 07:27, MJ Ray wrote:
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk
contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up
into =20 >> several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those =20 >>
I suggest considering Xen if the hardware and application permits. Seems to have a lot less overhead and is really quite popular.
I second this. It takes a bit of work to get right but once done it rocks.
This link can get you going in about 5 minutes. http://www.option-c.com/xwiki/Xen
We are already testing the latest and greatest, and been offering the above setup (with some mods) to a few existing customers.
Its worked really well, I have used it on a few DNS machines to split up the DNS/mail backups etc..
With rackprices having shot up recently its perfect (Although power has gone up as well so the dual processor machines dont look so good now)
Darren
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On 26 Apr 2006, at 19:57, Andy Trevor wrote:
On Wednesday 26 April 2006 07:27, MJ Ray wrote:
Martyn Drake martyn@drake.org.uk
contemplating using VMWare Server to "partition" the machine up into =20 several segments and rent out a Linux virtual server for those =20
I suggest considering Xen if the hardware and application permits. Seems to have a lot less overhead and is really quite popular.
I second this. It takes a bit of work to get right but once done it rocks.
Well, VMware looks unlikely now anyway. Had tremendous amounts of difficulty using the thing, and I'm also hampered by the fact that the virtual consoles run under Linux or Windows. I'm running OS X (although I can cheat - I'm on an Intel Mac with Parallel's Workstation beta and Windows XP (spit!spit!) running under it. I've found Linux doesn't quite run as well as I would have hoped under Parallels, but hopefully they're working on it).
So yes, playing about with Xen seems to be the next logical step. My provider has actually been very generous and given me better hardware to play with too - it's now a Pentium D 930 with 2Gb of RAM (rather than a Pentium D 820 with 1Gb RAM) so there's a bit more oomph (plus VT support now) to experiment.
Regards,
Martyn
On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 22:19 +0100, Martyn Drake wrote:
So yes, playing about with Xen seems to be the next logical step. My provider has actually been very generous and given me better hardware to play with too - it's now a Pentium D 930 with 2Gb of RAM (rather than a Pentium D 820 with 1Gb RAM) so there's a bit more oomph (plus VT support now) to experiment.
VT support, drool....
To be honest as much as I love and rely on VMware I don't think this was an ideal application for it anyway.
VMware isn't actually that good at running many instances on a single host ( you are pushing your luck at more than 2-3 VM instances per CPU core, any more and the IO starts to really drag in my experience ) The ESX version is a lot better in this respect.
The basic VMware Server I believe also has a limitation whereby there is nothing stopping a careless or malicious user on one of the VM's from causing havoc for the others by doing something silly like forkbombing their machine.
On 28 Apr 2006, at 00:04, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
VT support, drool....
It works *really* well on the Intel Macs.
To be honest as much as I love and rely on VMware I don't think this was an ideal application for it anyway.
VMware isn't actually that good at running many instances on a single host ( you are pushing your luck at more than 2-3 VM instances per CPU core, any more and the IO starts to really drag in my experience ) The ESX version is a lot better in this respect.
The basic VMware Server I believe also has a limitation whereby there is nothing stopping a careless or malicious user on one of the VM's from causing havoc for the others by doing something silly like forkbombing their machine.
I believe even the GSX version does this as well - to limit stuff like that you'd have to fork out for the ESX edition.
Regards,
Martyn
On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 07:15 +0100, Martyn Drake wrote:
VT support, drool....
It works *really* well on the Intel Macs.
Does anyone happen to know if or when it is fully supported by Xen...If my understanding of these things is correct then full VT support would allow you to run an OS in Xen without adding the Xen kernel extensions to the guest.
The basic VMware Server I believe also has a limitation whereby there is nothing stopping a careless or malicious user on one of the VM's from causing havoc for the others by doing something silly like forkbombing their machine.
I believe even the GSX version does this as well - to limit stuff like that you'd have to fork out for the ESX edition.
Yes I think that is the case, the way I understand it the new free (as in beer) Vmware Server is more feature complete than the old GSX version which has now been depreciated. Most of my VMware experience has come from the Workstation Product and GSX server, Although I have briefly played around with ESX I haven't actually got around to playing with the free one yet.
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Andy Trevor -
Darren -
Martyn Drake -
MJ Ray -
Owen Synge -
Wayne Stallwood