[ale] Virtualization question

[Michael Trausch]

I don't know if this will help you out at all, but I will describe what I
use for virtualization on my home system.

What I use is actually a combination of two things: LXC, for lightweight
containers, and KVM for when I need a full VM.  I have the system setup with
Ubuntu Server on the bare metal.  At the present moment in time, I only have
LXC containers running.  I create them by hand for now, but I am in the
process of creating a set of scripts to manage them to make my life easier.
My goal is to be able to easily provision a new VM with just a single
command, using either LXC or KVM, depending on what the underlying OS in the
VM needs to be.

For storage, my VMs are using filesystems stored in LVM logical volumes.
The LVM volumes are named after the systems that they are for, so that I
don't have to remember things like mapping /dev/sdc42 to a particular VM.
Instead, I can look at the name and know what it is for; for example,
/dev/data/vm.spicerack.trausch.us would be the volume for the filesystem for
spicerack.trausch.us.

Also, using LVM makes it possible to easily grow, shrink, and snapshot the
volumes for various tasks.

I also use logical volumes for whole VMs running in KVM. Though managing
those can sometimes be more difficult since instead of housing a filesystem,
they house what ends up being a whole drive from the VM's point of view.
That can make things a bit hairy depending on the OS installed in the VM.

I have really liked using LXC.  Being that it is in the mainline kernel, and
being that it is supported upstream and that it does things like namespace
parts of the system (such as the network stack), it makes it more useful
than something like OpenVZ (because you don't have to go outside the
container to do things like set up IP tunnelling, each LXC container can do
that in its own network stack), life is easier.  You can also use the Linux
cgroup system to do things like limit which CPUs a VM (or group of VMs) run
on, and limit resources like consumption of CPU cycles and memory and so
forth.

In any event, there are a great many systems out there... LXC and KVM are
both in the vanilla kernel, though, and that is the main reason that I use
them.

--
Sent from my Android-powered G2.
On Nov 6, 2010 11:02 AM, "Joshua Kite" <jwkite at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am looking for advice on how to set up some virtual environments for use
> at home.
>
> I have a server, and I want it to have two distinct functions. One is
> network filtering, etc. using squid and some other applications. The other
> is my basic web/file/print server. I may want to play with something else
> in the future, so virtualization seems like the right choice.
>
> The hardware that I have available is a dual xeon hyperthreaded 32 bit
> machine. And that's the problem. I would like to run a bare-metal
> hypervisor, but all of the current ones seem to be for 64-bit only. That
> makes sense, but it doesn't work for me. I actually installed the previous
> version of VMWare's ESXi only to find out that the free license will only
> allow me to make use of one of the processors once the trial period is up.
>
> So the next option appears to be a light OS for a host system with a
> hypervisor running inside of it. I have run Ubuntu for both desktop and
> server for the past 5 or so years, but I am willing to consider other
> distributions for both host and guest for the network filtering OS. I'll
> probably use Ubuntu for the web/file/print functionality since I'm most
> familiar with it.
>
> I have been fighting with my home server for weeks after a crash, and I'm
> kind of tired of playing with it, so I am looking for a very dumbed down,
> easy solution with step by step instructions for installation and
automatic
> startup of guests.
>
> Do any of you have recommendations?
>
> Thank you very much,
>
> Josh Kite
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