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Thread: Virtualisation

  1. #1
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Virtualisation

    This seems the be the latest and greatest thing for servers. I'm not really sure I understand it or the benefits of it.

    Does someone have a primer explaining what it does and why it is so big these days?

    My thinking is that you have a virtual server for every app, so if there are issues with it, you can "shut down" that server, without effecting anything else, yet you only have to have one physical server. Close?

    Also, what are the limitations of setting things up like this? do you have to have the same OS on all? what hardware drivers are made available between them? Any idea if DVB-T cards would be available through this?

    I'm sure there are good resources for this already, but there is also a lot of guff that confuses the issue

    btw, i'm tempted to move to Server 2008 for my server box.

  2. #2
    Splash
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    Re: Virtualisation

    If you're moving to Server 2008 then you should look at Hyper-V, which is Microsoft's hypervisor.

    Essentially virtualisation allows you to maximise hardware usage - you don't necessarily need to buy a new box for your new SQL box, for example, if your current box has capacity to do the work that it will do. The idea being that you can carve up physical boxes.

    Having a seperate virtual box for each application is possibly overkill though: what stops you from just restarting a dodgy application?

    There's a lot of stuff to consider, not least of which is what to do if your host server has hardware issues, but most enterprise grade virtualisation will allow you to hot-migrate a virtual server to another host when that happens.


    It's something I do a reasonable amount of work with - feel free to drop me a line in PM if you want to go into specifics.

  3. #3
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    OK, some specifics.

    I have a server, not enterprise class or anything, it's just a AMD quad core on a Gigabyte motherboard, 8GB, and two PERC 5/i RAID cards (that is the reason for the AMD system, as they have issues with non-Dell Intel motherboards). I use it for general file storage, a Squeezebox server for my music and a MediaPortal TVServer.

    I'm tempted to replace Vista with Server 2008. This will mean some heavy configuration changes because of MediaPortal not being designed to run on 2k8, and 2k8 not supporting DVB cards out of the box.

    What happens now is if I need to restart the server because of configuration or changes for SqueezeServer or MediaPortal I loose both services while I do it. It would be good if I could just re-start a virtual server if I'm having issues. Especially with MP and the DVB-T cards I have (may be solved with a couple of new ones I have on order though).

    Any idea what would happen with the DVB-T cards? would they only be available on the host, or would they work virtualised?

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    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    Two other big advantages of VMs are:

    Backup - It's simply a matter of backing up one big file in the host OS. It's a stupidly easy copy and paste operation, with restoration of an entire server only taking as long as the file transfer and the VM booting up.

    One install, many machines - The VM is machine independent and is only limited to what the VM software can run on.
    At my place of work we do a lot of stuff with MMO servers and some high profile companies. One of the big issues we had was messing about with the server and destroying things for other people unexpectedly. As the entire thing is VM'ed now, we can just copy the file from the server to our desktops and each play with it locally. This gives us the chance to screw things up with zero risk to the server
    It even works on lower end chips without hardware based virtualisation, but it's slower
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

  5. #5
    Splash
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    Re: Virtualisation

    The DVB-T cards are likely to be an issue - while you can happily attach physical USB devices to virtual machines other hardware doesn't really translate. Think of the hypervisor (be it Windows Hyper-V, VMWare ESXi or some other) as a kind of Hardware Abstraction Layer - the physical hardware isn't presented to the virtual machine.

    If you can get hold of a USB DVB card (or if the one you have is already USB) you may be in luck though.

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    Re: Virtualisation

    You also need to keep in mind that some software won't even install if they can't see a nice recent GPU installed in the system (which you won't get in the VM). This may require more hackery, if it even works.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

  7. #7
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    Thanks for that clarification guys

    Ironically, the tuners I'm replacing, Hauppauge Nova-T 500s are two USB tuners and a USB controller on a single card. So I suspect I could get them to work. The two Pinnacle ones are not though.I'll just see what happens when I get the two new tuners installed and set up, hopefully TV recording will be more reliable and I won't need to mess about with the actual server just yet.

    Still tempted to move to 2008 even without the virtualisation though

  8. #8
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    Re: Virtualisation

    My understanding of Server 08's virtualisation is that the first install takes the role of the "host" OS. This instance of windows can see all hardware as normal and should be able to see and use any odd hardware that you can find drivers for. Subsequent "guest" installs can only see the virtualised hardware.

    PS. These guest installs can be any OS you like. Generally the virtualisation immitates common hardware so most other OS's will have driver support, even if its not on the official supported list.

  9. #9
    Splash
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    Re: Virtualisation

    What Pip says is pretty much correct if adding the Hyper-V role to a server 08 install. I can't remember if Funkstar ended up splashing on a Technet sub or not, but if not then another option is Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, which is the free bare metal version (kinda on par with VMWare's ESXi and Citrix XenServer, also free). if you went with Hyper-V Server you'd manage your virtual machines from another box with Virtual Machine Manager installed.

  10. #10
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    Yes, I have Technet. I had an Action pack subscription before that, but Technet works better for me.

    So software isn't an issue.

  11. #11
    Splash
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    Re: Virtualisation

    Licensing aside it may still be worth considering a bare metal hypervisor, rather than one that requires you to install an OS in terms of resource overhead.

  12. #12
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    I'll keep that in mind Splash

    Once I get the new tuners installed, I'll see if reliability improves (I suspect it will)

    My plan is to move the OS to a SSD at some point, so I'll look at OS when I do that.

  13. #13
    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: Virtualisation

    generally workloads that require specialist hardware , like the tuners are *not* good candidates for virtualisation .
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    Re: Virtualisation

    Personally, I find virtualization handy as a security tool. My folks both do a lot of online banking, and I figure it useful to have a tightly locked-down virtual machine that can be used for nothing but their online banks. It's a minor hassle to boot the VM up and everything, but I'd rather that and have them sandbox their activities than have their online banking stuff used on the same system as whatever viruses and **** they might've picked up in their other activities.

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