C2: Insanely Affordable x86-64 Servers

[Alex Sage]

Horrible OS Choice and it seems like there is no custom ISO option

[Alex Sage]

I guess I could install Xen on top of Ubuntu?

[scottalanmiller]

@aaronstuder said:

I guess I could install Xen on top of Ubuntu?

Ubuntu will allow a Xen install, but it will move Xen to be what runs on the bare metal. So they may limit you. These often do by controlling the kernel.

[Alex Sage]

I want to be able to have a bunch of 512MB CentOS7 servers.....

Can anyone think of a good way to do that?

[scottalanmiller]

@aaronstuder said:

I want to be able to have a bunch of 512MB CentOS7 servers.....

Can anyone think of a good way to do that?

A bunch? Like how many? Ten, one hundred? What's the end goal? What storage and CPU do you want or need?

[Alex Sage]

@scottalanmiller I use very little CPU or Harddrive Space. What I need is RAM

I was thinking about 15 - 20 VMs

[Alex Sage]

Basically a hosted home lab

Basic Web Server
OwnCloud
Jumpbox

Etc

[Alex Sage]

Hmmmm...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Xen

[scottalanmiller]

@aaronstuder said:

Basically a hosted home lab

Basic Web Server
OwnCloud
Jumpbox

Etc

Well. Let's use 20VMs. If you are talking $5 instances, that's going to be $100/mo. You could buy a small server and go to colo for that price.

[scottalanmiller]

For cost effective, a box at home is the best, obviously.

[scottalanmiller]

If you don't want VMs, containers are lighter and faster. So pretty much any system where you can run LXC will do nicely.

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said:

If you don't want VMs, containers are lighter and faster. So pretty much any system where you can run LXC will do nicely.

Yup. Exactly what I do on Vultr, and I have a VM at home for LXC. XO runs in LXC and when a new version comes out, Ansible clones it and updates it for me but leaves the old container. I don't have to do any work at all. Then if a bug happens like the recent backup to NFS bug, I just use the old container.

[Alex Sage]

LXC or LXD?

[scottalanmiller]

@aaronstuder said:

LXC or LXD?

LXD is an LXC interface.

https://linuxcontainers.org/

[Alex Sage]

With containers I might not need nearly as much RAM

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said:

@aaronstuder said:

LXC or LXD?

LXD is an LXC interface.

https://linuxcontainers.org/

Ubuntu is working on live migration with LXD. That will be awesome.

[Alex Sage]

That will be awesome! How do you backup containers?

[stacksofplates]

@aaronstuder said:

That will be awesome! How do you backup containers?

Just tar the container folder. You can also do file level backups of the containers. LXC by default stores everything in /var/lib/lxc/ so if you want to restore a file to container1 you could just cp it back to /var/lib/lxc/container1/root/pathtofolder/

[Alex Sage]

@johnhooks Can I do that with the containers running?

[Alex Sage]

Can I run different Distros in containers or just the same as the host?