HyperVisor

scottalanmiller

So which product is it? Is it this one?

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san#VSAN-FREE

What kinds of servers do you recommend. I have dell R710. Or should I look for getting better servers? I am going to get all SSD drives.

R710 is old, but works just fine. The 7x0 series is excellent.

mroth911

So what would the configuration be. Ovirt ran way to slow on these servers.

Dashrender

Are you getting new hardware? or saddled with the old stuff?

mroth911

I was thinking of using the old stuff or get newer servers. not brand new. but Newer models.

Dashrender

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

I was thinking of using the old stuff or get newer servers. not brand new. but Newer models.

Well, you're R710's are from 2009 - get something from 2016'ish will run circles around that old gear. Toss on the fact of SSD storage and 10 GB ethernet, you won't be able to pick yourself up off the floor.

Assuming Moore's law holds, 7 years newer equipment, you're looking at 6 to 8 times faster gear.

mroth911

@Dashrender ok So what models am I looking for then?

dafyre

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

@Dashrender ok So what models am I looking for then?

We picked some some R720 / 720XDs, I think around 2015 / 2016.

mroth911

Any place besides ebay to get servers.

Dashrender

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

Any place besides ebay to get servers.

@xByteSean one of ML advertisers... they are good ( So I hear) in spite of being an advertiser

scottalanmiller

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

I was thinking of using the old stuff or get newer servers. not brand new. but Newer models.

Old stuff generally means high cost. You need many more servers to do the same workload. That means more power, more parts, more of your time to manage, and more complex setups.

RojoLoco

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

@Dashrender ok So what models am I looking for then?

Current model is 740, so any 720 or 730 would be newer / faster / etc. And definitely check out xbyte, they're on the ball with pricing and service.

mroth911

Ok, I will take a look. What is the software or flavor of linux of choice. Centos, Ubuntu ?

black3dynamite

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

Ok, I will take a look. What is the software or flavor of linux of choice. Centos, Ubuntu ?

Fedora if you want the latest KVM and Cockpit Web Console.
CentOS and Fedora is a lot easier and faster to setup a Headless Virtualization.

With Fedora 31:
sudo dnf -y groupinstall "Headless Virtualization"

With CentOS 8:
sudo dnf -y groupinstall "Virtualization Host"

Or install it during the installation.

Emad R

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

Ok, I will take a look. What is the software or flavor of linux of choice. Centos, Ubuntu ?

for me it is centos, cause of the logic :

If you want only one role to function in a server and it will not change, and you want it to do it good, and it does not require new features go with old stable or centos... everyone here will tell you fedora so you can be beta tester

scottalanmiller

@Emad-R said in HyperVisor:

If you want only one role to function in a server and it will not change, and you want it to do it good, and it does not require new features go with old stable or centos... everyone here will tell you fedora so you can be beta tester

You know darn well it's nothing like being a beta tester. Fedora is production releases, just like CentOS. It's just regular updates without problematic upgrades, rather than stagnation with upgrade problems.

CentOS is great if you don't have any plan of being retained and want to just let it stagnate and move on before you have to update it. Fedora is for people trying to keep updates regular and avoid big forklifts between versions.

Calling it a beta is ridiculous. CentOS and Fedora get their testing the same or similar. You are acting like you don't know the difference between the age of software versions and testing of software releases. That's stuff everyong working in IT needs to understand, it's core and critical concepts.

scottalanmiller

@mroth911 said in HyperVisor:

Ok, I will take a look. What is the software or flavor of linux of choice. Centos, Ubuntu ?

For a hypervisor, absolutely not CentOS. Ubuntu Current or Fedora. We mostly use Fedora, but are looking at switching. But platform updates are still something that using any LTS release will burn you on.

scottalanmiller

@Emad-R said in HyperVisor:

for me it is centos, cause of the logic :
If you want only one role to function in a server and it will not change, and you want it to do it good, and it does not require new features go with old stable or centos

The problem here is associating "old" with "stable." CentOS isn't really any more stable than Fedora. It's just a code base that doesn't change. That's a totally different concept that exists for legacy application support. It really has no place here where the entire stack is updated and maintained together.

The other problem is that in a hypervisor, those "new features" include things like speed and stability. So there is no such thing as a situation where you don't want them. Sounds good, until you look into what it actually means in this situation, then it's clear it doesn't make sense. And the huge risks that it adds that people like to ignore can be just huge.

FATeknollogee

@scottalanmiller said in HyperVisor:
We mostly use Fedora, but are looking at switching.

Why?
Switching to what?

scottalanmiller

@FATeknollogee said in HyperVisor:

@scottalanmiller said in HyperVisor:
We mostly use Fedora, but are looking at switching.

Why?
Switching to what?

To Ubuntu, we are using it more and more now. It's come a long way and gets more attention and is lighter is basic builds.

1337

@Dashrender said in HyperVisor:

Assuming Moore's law holds, 7 years newer equipment, you're looking at 6 to 8 times faster gear.

It doesn't hold unfortunately.

Per core it's 15-20% faster per generation when there is a major technology shift. A lot less otherwise.

So R710 is Nehalem Xeons.

We have the following major generations:

R710 - Nehalem architecture, Xeon 5500 series, on 45 nm
R720 - Sandy Bridge architecture, Xeon E5-2600 v1, on 32nm - PCIe 3.0 introduced on E5-2600 v2 series.
R730 - Haswell architecture, Xeon E5-2600 v3, on 22nm - DDR4 RAM introduced
R740 - Skylake architecture, Xeon Scalable, on 14nm

Expect cores on a R740 to be roughly 70% faster than R710 at the same GHz. It's a lot but not as much as you would think. Especially since clock speeds have gone down and core count has gone up.