vmware for hosting business

[atomicturtle]

There is considerably less overhead involved in using OpenVZ/Virtuozzo vs. vmware. They work from entirely different concepts of virtualization, vmware is first and foremost a hardware emulation system. Virtuzzo, OpenVZ, vserver, etc are all compartmentalizing the OS under a common kernel. So theres no layers of abstraction between the file system, or the kernel, so you can scale it a lot farther.

OpenVZ support is on the list for future ASL releases too.

 

[faris]

Hmm...now that I've looked into all this in detail I've discovered a big problem.

Basically many people are warning me off using VM Server due to performance issues, and pointing me towards OpenVZ/Virtuozzo.

HOWEVER I *require* Scott's grsec-patched kernel and this simply can't be used with OpenVZ/Virtuozzo because both of these options use a single custom kernel. Only a fourth option, Linux-vm, seems to offer support for grsec.

Why do I require grsec? Because I have a lot of customers running all sorts of scripts and as Scott knows having the grsec patches installed on our systems have saved our customer' bacon (and mine) more than once.

Faris.

 

[breun]

Yes, you'll need a kernel with both the grsec and OpenVZ patches then. Scott mentioned he has OpenVZ support planned for ASL.

 

[faris]

Ah! Yes. I see now. Unfortunately I need it now really

I guess I'll deploy the new sever with no virtualisation initially and see how things go. If I can then add virtualisation on top of that (i.e. have plesk running on the hardware node and then also have some vm/ve/whatevers running on top of that then I'll be very happy.

If not....it will all have to wait until the next hardware upgrade

Faris.

 

[faris]

After all that I'm probably going to go with Virtuozzo after all. I'm still a little concerned but we'll see.

Faris.

 

[ali@datavision]

I use both Vmware and Virtuozzo.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages however it will depend on how you intend to scale and the features you require.
I was not too impressed with the free standard version of Vmware and use it only for non production servers but Vmware ESX server is very powerful, particular if you want to implement multiple VMWARE boxes and use a SAN. It also allows for the added benefit of running with linux and windows VM's on the same hardware which you do not have with virtuozzo.
For hosting environments running linux based VM's i am pretty impressed with Virtuozzo. I have it running on a Quad Opteron processor system which took some configuration to get working as it was not apparently supported but it works great now and has for months. There is absolutely no degradation in performance from running in a dedicated box.
I still think Vmware ESX ( now called Infrastructure) is the way for mission critical solutions but it does come with quite a heft price tag. I have also signed up with Softlayer who offered me a good deal where i only pay $30 per month for a Virtuozzo license and $6 for plesk within Vmware which works out to be quite handy.
I just thought i would add my 2c to this post.

 

[faris]

Thanks Ali. That's very interesting.

What I don't get is how hosting servers aren't getting hacked left right and centre without grsec in the kernel. Surely a million and one servers have old versions of things like gallery and nuke and phpbb on them that allow all sorts of **** to be uploaded in a way that might bypasses mod_security. In fact most hosting companies don't even bother with mod_security.

What the hell are they doing to secure things?

Faris.