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    Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IT Discussion
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    • scottalanmillerS
      scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      Can you do this same thing at home using just a desktop for hardware? Yes. So it's not a bad idea or impossible to do, it's the real world limitations and conditions set on cloud providers that is the option. I know of no VPS provider that does not shut down hardware virtualization passthrough which is a requirement.

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      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller
        last edited by

        Real world, this would be costly, anyway. Memory is the biggest cost in VPS and each Windows instance would reasonably require 2.5GB+. That'll run up the bills quickly if you have three. Plus the Linux instance. That's like a 12GB instance, not cheap at all.

        You'd pay for hardware for home really, really quickly.

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        • siringoS
          siringo
          last edited by

          Yep all good points, thanks.
          What about a dedicated server, would I be able to do it one of them?

          scottalanmillerS travisdh1T 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • scottalanmillerS
            scottalanmiller @siringo
            last edited by

            @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

            Yep all good points, thanks.
            What about a dedicated server, would I be able to do it one of them?

            Yes, a dedicated server would need to do that or it couldn't even be classified as a server post 2005. Virtualization and RAID are minimum starting points to be server class hardware for the last several generations. Without them, it would just be a toy. Even desktops do virtualization. So as a dedicated box, it would be literally useless if it couldn't do that.

            So you can find some providers that do dedicated hardware like that, generally it is not cheap. You can also buy your own and put it somewhere like Colocation America (see banner ads floating around this conversation) where they can get you a 1U rack space for around $50/mo. It's not cheap until you compare to cloud hosting for a few demo servers and suddenly putting a cheap 1U server into a colo isn't so bad.

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            • travisdh1T
              travisdh1 @siringo
              last edited by

              @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

              Yep all good points, thanks.
              What about a dedicated server, would I be able to do it one of them?

              That's what I do for my home lab. The only Windows that ever ran on it was the first beta build of Server 2019, and I ended up not doing anything with it. It's running KVM on a Ubuntu Server base (not my favorite, but hey, it's cheap.)

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              • scottalanmillerS
                scottalanmiller
                last edited by

                To give a quick example of the value of colo...

                An older, cheap, 1U server that can have 32GB of RAM, the minimum you'd really want for a tiny lab, is going to be around $500 - hit up xByte.com for that.

                Colo for that is going to be $50/mo. So $600/year.

                So that is $1100 for the first year.

                Do the same with Vultr or Digital Ocean or Linode and you are at $160/mo or $1920 for the first year.

                The colo drops to just $600/year after the first year. The cloud VPS stays at $1920 each year.

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                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller
                  last edited by

                  Beyond that, the VPS can't virtualize (but can do containers) so pretty much useless, especially for Windows. But ignore that point.

                  If you wanted to go a lot bigger, going to 64GB with the xByte server might be another $200 one time. To do that with the VPS will literally double the cost to $2840/year!

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                  • siringoS
                    siringo
                    last edited by

                    Eeeek, that's starting to look too expensive.

                    I've got hardware lying around all over the place at work, I'm sure I could purloin some for a Linux box at home and go that route.

                    I've not had much to do with Linux. What should I look for for the server & virtualisation program?

                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • scottalanmillerS
                      scottalanmiller @siringo
                      last edited by

                      @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                      What should I look for for the server & virtualisation program?

                      Just install Fedora 28. And install KVM, it's included.

                      dnf group install with-optional virtualization
                      

                      That's it. Everything you need is installed.

                      https://docs.fedoraproject.org/quick-docs/en-US/getting-started-with-virtualization.html

                      siringoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • siringoS
                        siringo @scottalanmiller
                        last edited by

                        @scottalanmiller Hey great thanks, Scott, I'll go and check that out this weeekend.

                        siringoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • siringoS
                          siringo @siringo
                          last edited by

                          Friday ended well. I located 3 Dell T610s I can lay my hands on. All have at least 24GB and at least 600GB SAS storage so I'm covered for hardware.

                          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @siringo
                            last edited by

                            @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                            Friday ended well. I located 3 Dell T610s I can lay my hands on. All have at least 24GB and at least 600GB SAS storage so I'm covered for hardware.

                            That should do it.

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                            • siringoS
                              siringo
                              last edited by

                              Crazy weekend.
                              Updated all the firmwares on the T610, installed Fedora, no problem. Need a GUI, so got that installed, no problem.
                              Post GUI install mouse decided it didn't want to work, move mouse wait .. wait .. wait, cursor moves. Unusable.
                              Replace mouse, no change. Cold boot no change. Rage building.
                              Dig up old 16GB 8 core i7 laptop I forgot about that runs W10.
                              Me thinks I'll use that instead & use Hyper-V. It's running 1511.
                              Update, update, update, update.
                              Then I find out my crappy modem just will not port forward.
                              Dig out old Billion modem, stuff around with that.
                              Arrgh! Can't find DSL log in password.
                              This story will continue ...

                              scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • scottalanmillerS
                                scottalanmiller @siringo
                                last edited by

                                @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                siringoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • siringoS
                                  siringo @scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by

                                  @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                  @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                  Trying to get access to the VMs on the host machine based at my house from the Interweb. So one of my current VPS windows servers can talk to one of the windows VMs on my home based host.

                                  scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • scottalanmillerS
                                    scottalanmiller @siringo
                                    last edited by

                                    @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                    @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                    @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                    Trying to get access to the VMs on the host machine based at my house from the Interweb. So one of my current VPS windows servers can talk to one of the windows VMs on my home based host.

                                    ZeroTier, then. If you want to act like it is a LAN, that's your best bet.

                                    siringoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • siringoS
                                      siringo @scottalanmiller
                                      last edited by

                                      @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                      @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                      @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                      @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                      Trying to get access to the VMs on the host machine based at my house from the Interweb. So one of my current VPS windows servers can talk to one of the windows VMs on my home based host.

                                      ZeroTier, then. If you want to act like it is a LAN, that's your best bet.

                                      Thanks Scott, I'll check it out & see what I can work out.

                                      siringoS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • siringoS
                                        siringo @siringo
                                        last edited by

                                        @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                        @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                        @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                        @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                        @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                        Trying to get access to the VMs on the host machine based at my house from the Interweb. So one of my current VPS windows servers can talk to one of the windows VMs on my home based host.

                                        ZeroTier, then. If you want to act like it is a LAN, that's your best bet.

                                        Thanks Scott, I'll check it out & see what I can work out.

                                        This ZeroTier is awesome, I've managed to create a network and put 2 nodes on it. Just trying to work out how to communicate from 1 to the other. This is going to be great fun.

                                        scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmillerS
                                          scottalanmiller @siringo
                                          last edited by

                                          @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                          @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                          @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                          @siringo said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                          @scottalanmiller said in Windows VMs on Linux VPS. Possible?:

                                          @siringo consider skipping port forwarding for a lab with something like ZeroTier. Depends on your goals. What are you trying to do what would make you want to port forward?

                                          Trying to get access to the VMs on the host machine based at my house from the Interweb. So one of my current VPS windows servers can talk to one of the windows VMs on my home based host.

                                          ZeroTier, then. If you want to act like it is a LAN, that's your best bet.

                                          Thanks Scott, I'll check it out & see what I can work out.

                                          This ZeroTier is awesome, I've managed to create a network and put 2 nodes on it. Just trying to work out how to communicate from 1 to the other. This is going to be great fun.

                                          It's an amazing product, AND the founder is semi-active here on ML.

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                                          • siringoS
                                            siringo
                                            last edited by

                                            Well I've managed to get my laptop & one of my 2016 VPSs to both have ZeroTier assigned IPs, but they can't ping each other yet, not sure why?? I'll look into it later tonight/tomorrow.

                                            Is there a ZT area within ML I could post ZL related questions to?

                                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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