Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?
-
Is it better to have lots of little VM's running things like Zabbix, Unifi, ScreenConnect etc etc all on separate VM's with just enough Memory, vCPU etc.
Or do I create a big VM with lots of power and run them all off one VM. I know the drawback of if this has an issue all my services go down. But once they are running they just tend to keep going.
I'm tempted to get rid of Spiceworks for the helpdesk tickets and install something osTickets, but wondering do I add it to an existing VM or make a new one.
-
Depends on your environment. If you need to be able to reboot one without bringing down the rest, you need to split them. If you need to be able to give someone else access to one with out access to the rest, split them. "Better" depends on your environment.
-
I prefer the Just Enough approach, and keep things separate.
What happens when one app wants PHP 5.5, and another wants PHP 7?
It seems to me to be easier to keep them separated.
-
We keep all of the services separate. If they are light services you could run a VM as a container host for LXC or Docker.
-
Will the host be able to support all the VMs? I agree - if you can split them off,.. do so. It won't hurt to do so. And if you need to move just one service from one host to another,.. you can rebalance your server(s) easier. Also makes nice on backing up.
-
Host is a Dell 2x Xoen, 32GB RAM
Currently has 8 Linux VM's and 1 Server 2012 (only doing RADIUS) so plenty of room.
I do tend to keep it all separate, but wondered what other people tend to do.
-
Licensing is the only major thing that pushes me to stack services on VMs generally, so 95% of my Linux VMs are single purpose.
-
Hypothetically if cost is of no concern, I would always split everything up. I try to split up as much as I can in general as long as it makes sense. It's kind of the ML UTM thing. I want everything to do its specific job really well, not be a jack of all trades master of none. All depends on your resources and purchasing power. I have a friend who works at that huge power plant in NY State as an electrical engineer and the budgets they have for their projects have gone plaid
-
Most of these VM's run opensource stuff anyway
-
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Most of these VM's run opensource stuff anyway
Well there you go.
@stacksofplates said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
We keep all of the services separate. If they are light services you could run a VM as a container host for LXC or Docker.
It really sounds like a job for this. Assuming you can containerize those apps, you could save yourself many hosts worth of updates.
-
@Dashrender said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Most of these VM's run opensource stuff anyway
Well there you go.
@stacksofplates said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
We keep all of the services separate. If they are light services you could run a VM as a container host for LXC or Docker.
It really sounds like a job for this. Assuming you can containerize those apps, you could save yourself many hosts worth of updates.
Yeah I really need to check out Docker.
-
@wirestyle22 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Yeah I really need to check out Docker.
I thought docker was for Dev's not running several production machines in one VM?
-
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Yeah I really need to check out Docker.
I thought docker was for Dev's not running several production machines in one VM?
It's container's running on a single machine share the same operating system kernel
-
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Yeah I really need to check out Docker.
I thought docker was for Dev's not running several production machines in one VM?
If you want more of a traditional VM style use LXC. It's really easy to use.
-
I'm late but with only the rarest exception you want discrete VMs or containers for everything. The more you separate the more power that you have to update, reboot, avoid conflicts, move workloads, etc.
-
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Yeah I really need to check out Docker.
I thought docker was for Dev's not running several production machines in one VM?
Docker is standard container. It's for any purpose. But look at LXC instead.
-
@Dashrender said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Most of these VM's run opensource stuff anyway
Well there you go.
@stacksofplates said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
We keep all of the services separate. If they are light services you could run a VM as a container host for LXC or Docker.
It really sounds like a job for this. Assuming you can containerize those apps, you could save yourself many hosts worth of updates.
Updates are so trivial on Linux, though. Just turn on auto updates and ignore them.
-
@hobbit666 said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
Host is a Dell 2x Xoen, 32GB RAM
Currently has 8 Linux VM's and 1 Server 2012 (only doing RADIUS) so plenty of room.
I do tend to keep it all separate, but wondered what other people tend to do.
In that situation I'd normally make tons and tons of little VMs. You've got nothing holding you back and you can see all machines in one spot instead of adding containers as another layer and more to manage and in different ways.
-
@dafyre said in Seperate VM's or one to rule them all?:
I prefer the Just Enough approach, and keep things separate.
What happens when one app wants PHP 5.5, and another wants PHP 7?
It seems to me to be easier to keep them separated.
Exactly. Or when they need different kernel options. Or you want to add FreeBSD.
-
Set up here is just about 1 vm per service if running Linux. Jira, pydio, openvpn stuff, wordpress nextcloud(testing) XO, Unitrends, other web services those are all separate vms.
On Windows we do 1 as well, or more if it is easy. But I think file and print and wsus on 1 vm might be the only multiple service server we have. CRM, ADFS, Exchange, AD, Sharepoint are single service vms though, for obvious reasons. So by far most vms running 1 service here. Just makes it easier.
