Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Watts Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Best practice Linux support vendors? Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:49:33 +0100 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <39f71fac-d3bf-4144-a7ee-5d71ebd9c08f@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <98bl3nFcglU6@mid.individual.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="6oIlEBqCjOm0MjsSUEk5CA"; logging-data="8746"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18x6L4hE5eqN8HyAd4olYstIceqN4PUSfA=" User-Agent: KNode/4.4.10 Cancel-Lock: sha1:U1LJe09bqX7CaP6IILMNgd9gYB8= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.os.linux.misc:1822 General Schvantzkoph wrote: > KVM is pretty easy to use. I'm using Scientific Linux 6 on my servers and > KVM VMs for both Windows and Linux. It's trivial to create a VM using the > virt-manager. After you've created your base VMs you can clone them by > simply making copies of the virtual disk files. With a Linux VM all you > have to do is reconfigure the networking for each clone and you're done. > For a Windows VM you will have to patch the registration number to create > multiple Windows VMs that can run simultaneously (it's exactly the same > process as if you were and OEM cloning Windows disks). To back up a VM > just make copies of your working virtual disks. I use SAMBA and NFS for > all of my user space on the VMs, that way backups can be done on the > native Linux systems. > > The downside of KVM is that the virtual IO is pretty slow. For CPU > intensive programs this isn't a problem but of IO intensive programs > you'll notice it. VMware has much better IO performance but it's not free > like KVM. OpenVZ is also interesting. It's not full virtualisation - rather it's "containerisaton". Everything runs in it's own space under the same kernel. Bit like a chroot jail, except each jail: 1) cannot see processes and other facets in other jails 2) each jail is resource limited in several ways at a jail level 3) each jail runs its own full userland but shares a common kernel. Needless to say, it's a lot more efficient if that model suits you. -- Tim Watts