My new hardware has features for virtualization. My plan was to try Fedora 14/KVM, Windows Server 2008 R2/Hyper-V, and VMware/ESXi 4.1, to see how they treated me. I also planned to try FreeBSD 8.1 as a guest and some VMWare appliance disk images from turnkeylinux.org. All this worked perfectly on KVM. Hyper-V worked, but was surprisingly fussy. Unfortunately, I could not install VMware on my hardware; it would always crash part way through the installation process.
I ran informal benchmarks using the Linux hdparm command, the FreeBSD diskinfo command, and the Unix benchmarking tools bonnie++, nbench, and unixbench. On Windows I used AIDA64 and Sandra. On all platforms I timed a 2gb file copy over http on 100Mbps Ethernet. The benchmarks were all over the place, so I will not tabulate the numbers.
Some things were faster in the guest than on the host, including buffered/cached disk read throughput and process creation.
The 2gb file copy took roughly 3.5 minutes on all platforms except for KVM/W2k8r2, which took 5 minutes.
KVM Documentation links
Use virsh to manage virtual servers (aka domains).
Fedora 14 guest on KVM
lvcreate -L 8g -n lv_f14guest vg_overt
virt-install -n f14guest -r 1024 -c /dev/dvd --os-type=linux --os-variant=fedora14 --boot=cdrom,hd --disk=/dev/vg_overt/lv_f14guest -w network:default --vnc --vnclisten=0.0.0.0 -v --virt-type=kvm
vncviewer overt
Stop and delete the smartd service.
MediaWiki appliance on KVM
Obtain appliance disk image from turnkeylinux.org/mediawiki.
lvcreate -L 4g -n lv_appliances vg_overt
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/vg_overt/lv_appliances
mkdir /mnt/appliances
mount /dev/vg_overt/lv_appliances /mnt/appliances
cd /mnt/appliances
unzip /mnt/hd/turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86.zip
yum install xmlstarlet
alias xml=xmlstarlet
# The vmdk file name is turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86.vmdk
# How to find vmdk file name:
xml sel -N a=http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/envelope/1 -T -t -m //a:File -v @a:href -n turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86/turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86.ovf
virt-install -n wikiguest -r 1024 --os-type=linux --os-variant=ubuntuhardy --boot=hd --import --disk=/mnt/appliances/turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86/turnkey-mediawiki-2009.10-2-hardy-x86.vmdk,format=vmdk -w network:default --vnc --vnclisten=0.0.0.0 -v --virt-type=kvm
$ ssh user@overt
$ su -
# sesetbool sshd_forward_ports 1
# exit
$ exit
$ ssh user@overt -L 18008:192.168.122.237:80 -L 18000:192.168.122.237:12320 -L 18001:192.168.122.237:12321 -L 18002:192.168.122.237:12322
browse to http://127.0.0.1:18008/ or https://127.0.0.1:18000/
Install Vsphere/ESXi
The installer crashes.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ThinESX.py", line 8, in <module>
Installer.Start()
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/Log.py", line 46, in wrapper
return func(*args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/ThinESXInstall.py", line 38, in Start
Install.Start(self, data)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/Log.py", line 46, in wrapper
return func(*args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/Install.py", line 40, in Start
data = self.Steps[self._Dispatcher.CurrentStep](data)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/Log.py", line 46, in wrapper
return func(*args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/ThinESX/ThinESXInstallSteps.py", line 70, in TargetSelectionStep
datastores - DatastoreEnumeration(None)
File "/usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/DatastoreEnumeration.py", line 15, in __init__
vmfs3Module.Load()
File "/lib/python2.5/vmkctl.py", line 11328, in Load
def Load(*args): return _vmkctl.ModuleImpl_Load(*args)
vmkctl.HostCtlException: Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: Failure
</module>
Based on the following two threads, I think that hardware support is the problem.
thread1
thread2
I removed some of the hardware but was not able to work around the crash. I could not find any gigabyte brand motherboards on the compatibility list. Some people recommend buying a used server for testing, and others recommend Supermicro/LSI.
Fedora 14 guest on Hyper-V
Fedora 14 does not come with the Hyper-V drivers. I tried the rpmfusion kmod-staging package. After loading the hv_netvsc module, I could get a DHCP lease, but the Linux kernel would crash often. The legacy network adapter performed better and was more stable.
FreeBSD 8.1 guest on Hyper-V
When I tried to install FreeBSD 8.1 x64 as a Hyper-V guest, the FreeBSD kernel crashed and Hyper-V hammered a processor core. I was not able to turn off the guest, nor get a clean shut down on the host. When I powered the host back on, the guest resumed the broken state. Granted, FreeBSD is not a supported guest, but a guest should not be able to lock up the host system.
Windows Server 2008 R2 guest on Hyper-V
When I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Hyper-V guest, it would not come online. The integration services were installed and the NIC showed up in device manager, but was missing from the "ipconfig /all" command output and from the "Manage network connections" control panel. The event log showed a message about "Microsoft VMBus Network" "This device cannot start". I re-installed the integration services, rebooted, and that brought the guest online.
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