Re: [Nolug] VirtualBox on Linux

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 08:38:45AM -0500, Clint Billedeaux wrote:
> Trying to do:
>
> At this point, I'm in testing phase because I don't have the experience to
> go full bore.
>
> The GOAL for now:
>
> To experiment with some systems to determine if virtualization is a viable
> option for my company. Of course we have some peripherals that are special
> cases (but so far that's not an issue), and some software that can be
> cranky, but not demanding on computing resources. The problem is we're
> losing the older hardware at about a computer a month. If I can virtualize
> those systems and it works well, then we might be looking to virtualize
> everything. I'd love to centralize the OS and Apps management.

VB (or VMWare) instances should be on a box dedicated to running
these. I don't know the rule of thumb, but this generally means that
your server configuration matches some planned number of VMs. This is
because the VM has no concept of what the host OS is having to do to
manage the unwieldy process that it sees the VM as.

For example:

* minimal services and OS on the host machine
* 1 cpu per VM, ideally with the process pinned to that CPU
* more than 1:1 physical memory to virtual memory
* more than 1:1 hard disk memory to virtual fs size - preferably as different logical disks
* VM NICS bridged to one of many real NICS

The above specs are shots in the dark, but the point is that the host
OS sees each VM as a single process that is very demanding on the CPU,
memory, and file system. I am not sure if (and how) VMs handle
many-core, but that just makes the resource contention on the host vm
worse.

I am not sure how VB compares to VMWare in using it for production
VMs, but Oracle is being pretty aggressive about improving VB.

Brett

>
> I don't need the small linux to run VirtualBox. It just needs to be able to
> RDP and that's it. After that, the heavy lifting will be on the servers.
>
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Mischa D. Krilov <rossum@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Looks like Puppy can do Virtualbox, too. I've had more out-of-the-ISO
>> success with Puppy over DSL on older laptops.
>>
>> http://puppylinux.org/wikka/VirtualBox
>>
>> Last time I played with VB on OSX hosting XP, low memory was a big
>> factor. Don't forget to turn off any eye candy in your guest OS.
>> Depending on what network resources your guest OS needs to access
>> (printers, file servers, domain controllers, etc.), you'll probably
>> need to set the virtual NIC to get a real IP from your network rather
>> than from your machine- It's called Bridged mode.
>>
>> Don't forget to have a good naming convention for your VMs if you have
>> more than a small handfull.
>>
>> What are you trying to do, out of curiosity?
>>
>> Mischa
>> --
>> Read my blog: http://rossum.blogspot.com
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-- 
B. Estrade <estrabd@gmail.com>
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