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@stacksofplates said in VMware Community Homelabs:

@Pete-S said in VMware Community Homelabs:

@Obsolesce said in VMware Community Homelabs:

@FATeknollogee said in VMware Community Homelabs:

Why don't we see this from the other Type-1 groups?

One thing the VMware "community" is very good at is grass roots movement.

From @lamw on Twitter:
https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2020/02/vmware-community-homelabs-project.html

VMware Community Homelabs

Because there is thing thing called the cloud, which is way cheaper and way more beneficial and efficient than spending thousands on hardware upfront.

Whatever it is, excluding some very specific scenarios, I'd rather learn and build it in Azure or AWS... You know, Two birds one stone.

The cloud is flexible but not cheap. It's only cheaper if your needs are very small or very dynamic. If you need performance or storage, cloud instances will get proportionally even more expensive.

And they know it of course. That's why they expand their services to make it harder to move the workload to another cloud provider or your own datacenter.

It 100% depends on the type of work. If you're taking in 5 billion requests per day, there's no way it's going to be cheaper on site than in public cloud.

Even with CFD type work where you'd normally have a cluster. You have to weigh the capex of the servers and the ongoing cost of the maintenance and utilities vs just spinning up 10-20 nodes when you need it. However if you get into long running solves like 6 months or so, then it might be cheaper on site. It really depends on the work load.

I think you're wrong. 5 billion hits per day is Google type traffic (a couple of years ago). And Google don't use the public cloud, they use their own servers. As do Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, Microsoft etc. People like Backblaze don't use the cloud.

The one company I know that I would expect to run their own servers but don't, are Netflix. They are on AWS. LinkedIn are also moving away from their own servers but that's not surprising since Microsoft owns them. I'm not sure they are actually running on Azure. It could be that they are just using Microsoft servers instead of their own.

Finance can calculate what's best but just because you're owning your server park doesn't mean you have to pay for it up front. It doesn't mean you don't have geo-redundancy or that it's all in one place. It doesn't mean you have to employ people that swaps hardware 24/7. And it doesn't mean you can't use cloud servers when you need.

@Dashrender said in VMware Community Homelabs:

@Pete-S said in VMware Community Homelabs:

Most IT people I know get their hardware for nothing where they work. So they have stuff like R710's at home.
So setting up a home lab isn't a cost thing, more a question of having the space.

The cost of power to run that 710 can likely make it more cost effective to run the VMs in a VPS. plus that gets rid of the noise pollution.

Depends on how many VMs you have. A R710 can easily handle twenty of those $5 vultr VMs. That's $1200 per year for VMs in a VPS. No way you can rack up that amount of money in electricity on one server.

Most IT people I know get their hardware for nothing where they work. So they have stuff like R710's at home.
So setting up a home lab isn't a cost thing, more a question of having the space.

@Obsolesce said in VMware Community Homelabs:

@FATeknollogee said in VMware Community Homelabs:

Why don't we see this from the other Type-1 groups?

One thing the VMware "community" is very good at is grass roots movement.

From @lamw on Twitter:
https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2020/02/vmware-community-homelabs-project.html

VMware Community Homelabs

Because there is thing thing called the cloud, which is way cheaper and way more beneficial and efficient than spending thousands on hardware upfront.

Whatever it is, excluding some very specific scenarios, I'd rather learn and build it in Azure or AWS... You know, Two birds one stone.

The cloud is flexible but not cheap. It's only cheaper if your needs are very small or very dynamic. If you need performance or storage, cloud instances will get proportionally even more expensive.

And they know it of course. That's why they expand their services to make it harder to move the workload to another cloud provider or your own datacenter.

Installing XCP-ng using a Windows PC.

This how to install XCP-ng and set up a VM using a Windows PC.

"XCP-ng" is the hypervisor and "XCP-ng Center" is the application that you can use to manage your XCP-ng server from your Windows PC. It's just a user interface so there is no hypervisor data stored on the Windows PC.

Prereqs

• Windows PC to work from.
• Server to install the hypervisor on.
  • Harddrive that is 46GB or larger, 70GB recommended.
  • More info here: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-hypervisor/system-requirements.html
  • Monitor & keyboard if you're installing locally.
• USB media or remote out-of-band management on the server (iDrac, iLO, IPMI etc)

Step 1

Download ISO file for XCP-ng from https://xcp-ng.org/download
It's about 0.5 GB.

Step 2

Option 1 - Use USB stick

Create a bootable USB by

• Download a software to write to USB
  • Etcher - https://www.balena.io/etcher/
  • Rufus - https://rufus.ie/
• Install downloaded software
• Write XCP-ng ISO to USB stick
• Plug the USB stick into the server

Option 2 - Use remote server management (advanced option)

Prepare to install ISO remotely by

• Share the folder on your Windows PC where you have the XCP-ng ISO file.
• Prepare the server so that the management port is connected to the same network, it has an IP address and you have the login and password needed. Usually these settings are in the BIOS.
• Use your web browser to log into the servers IP and set up remote media pointing to the share on your Windows PC.

Step 3

Start up the server and install XCP-ng.
If it doesn't try to boot from the USB you need to go into the BIOS settings and change boot order.

Install is pretty straight forward except that you want to decide where you want to run your VMs. Either you can use the boot disk or if you can use another drive or raid array if you have that. Make sure you select thin provisioning, it may not be the default.

After XCP-ng is installed and the server rebooted you end up in a management console.

Note the hypervisors management network IP because you need it later.

Step 4

Download XCP-ng Center from https://github.com/xcp-ng/xenadmin/releases
Make sure you pick the latest release.

Step 5

Install XCP-ng Center.

XCP-ng Center is a fork of Citrix Xencenter and they are virtually identical.

Step 6

Inside XCP-ng Center pick "Add New Server" and enter the IP of the hypervisors management interface.
Now you can access the hypervisor settings from the XCP-ng Center.

Step 7

For you to be able to create a VM, XCP-ng needs a network share where it can access ISO files so that you can actually install an OS on your VM.
Create it it by

• Share a folder on your Windows PC or use local NAS if you have one.
• Copy or download the ISO of the OS you want to install and put it in the shared folder.
• In XCP-ng select "New Storage" and select ISO library and "Windows File Sharing". Enter location of your Windows share (easiest by using IP address and share name) and the login/password needed. If everything worked you should be able to see "SMB ISO library" in XCP-ng Center under your hypervisor. Inside that you'll see the ISO files stored on your shared Windows folder.

Step 8

Create a VM by clicking "New VM".
XCP-ng uses templates to set some basic minimum for the OS you intend to install. Pick the OS you are installing or the closest one to it. If you are installing something that is not there at all, you can pick "Other install media".

Select your ISO file when it asks for installation media. Pick how many cores and memory you need. And add a virtual disk or change the size of the one it suggests if needed. Then finally network settings and you are done.

XCP-ng will create the VM and automatically boot it up. In XCP-ng Center you can see the VM under your hypervisor in the left pane. If you click the "Console" tab you can see the screen and interact with the VM. Go through with the installation of the OS here.

Resources

If you get stuck you may want to have a look at Citrix documentation since XCP-ng is a fork of Citrix Hypervisor (earlier called Citrix Xenserver) so most things are identical.
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xencenter/current-release/

Normally you can do everything you need with the XCP-ng Center for your day to day things. If you however need to do more advanced things there are CLI commands you need to run on the hypervisor. For that the Citrix documentation is indispensible.

If you want to talk to others, XCP-ng has a user forum.
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/

There is also quite a few videos that will take you through installation and other things on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=xcp-ng

Enjoy!

@JasGot said in Reconsidering ProxMox:

@JaredBusch said in Reconsidering ProxMox:

You are intentionally doing it the hard way. No hypervisor is designed to use a full install media to turn up guests, even if they have an option for CDROM. Just put the ISO on there like you should.

I understand this is easy to do. I also understand that if I was sourcing the media at the time of install, this would be super simple and I would not have even thought about local USB access.

But I also believe if I have bootable usb server media in my hand, I should be able to use it without much difficulty. After all, they made the CD/DVD an option..... and why? Most servers don't even come with CD/DVDs any more.....

Having found no documentation on how to use local usb for the installation source, I did upload an ISO. It took MUCH longer than sticking the USB stick in the USB port. (USB Stick - 2.1 seconds; ISO Media - 9 Minutes to download from MS, and 3 minutes to upload to PVE).

That's all. Nothing more, nothing less, I just think I should be able to easily use the resources that are already laying next to the server on the bench.

I don't think that using a USB bootable stick on the hypervisor is possible with xenserver/xcp-ng either.

What you really want there is a file share outside the hypervisor that has all the ISO files. If you have no infrastructure available, the easiest thing would be to download the iso file to your workstation and share that folder with the hypervisor.

@DustinB3403 said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

@scottalanmiller said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

@DustinB3403 said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

It's super simple to take a closet for example and put a vent near the top of the wall to let heat escape.

Not if you don't have that closet, the vent would let in hotter air, or you don't have outside access from a closet.

Of course, if you physically don't have any space, then using this example doesn't make sense. The question really is "at what point should a business start looking at different form factors (from the desktop style)?"

It ridiculous to even think there is no space for a rack. Unless someone runs a company out of their bedroom. A rack takes what, 5 square feet?

@JaredBusch said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

@Pete-S said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

I don't know. Many here seems to think every SMB is 5 employees but that's really a SOHO. SMB is up to 500 employees.

it was very specifically called out the example of doctor or dentist offices.

These are not SOHO in any way. They also don't have a server room. They have a server sitting on a desk.

Sure, the offices that are all par of some hospital conglomerate are not, but there are many, many more that are not part of that. There are 3 doctor offices within ~2 miles of my house in Schaumburg, IL. Not a small town, and not 3rd world.

There is an uncoutnable number of dental practices.

SOHO is Small Office or Home Office. What you are describing sounds exactly like a small office.

@Dashrender said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

@Pete-S said in Virtualization when there is only one VM?:

Stop running glorified desktops as servers. Buy real rack servers and put them in a rack. No sane person wants to use that as a workstation. Problem solved.

I don't consider this reasonable in most SMB setups. A desktop style server system is generally fine. Desktop servers are still huge compared to normal desktops (especially now with CD-RomLess systems, they are tiny.

I don't know. Many here seems to think every SMB is 5 employees but that's really a SOHO. SMB is up to 500 employees.

Anyway, I haven't installed a tower server in a very, very long time. If someone only needs a simple server, we use low power short depth 1U rack servers. If you don't want to waste space, you can use a half rack or smaller and also put switches in it. And you can roll it around if you want to. Sticking to the 19" rack format just makes life easier I think. Also more flexible if you want to move a server or two to colo down the line.

Maybe not Dell but Supermicro and others have really small power efficient 1U rack servers that's like 12 inches deep. CPUs like Intel C3000, D1572 etc. They easily fit in wall racks.