Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls
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There are tools to help with migrating VMs. I know we have guides here for KVM (Proxmox). I believe we have some here for XCP-ng or XenServer.
Personally, I would create a new VM on Proxmox or XCP-ng and then sync the data over.
They both have pretty good community forum.
XCP-ng
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/Proxmox
https://forum.proxmox.com/ -
@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
I have a client that wants to repurpose 3 Windows Servers that are no longer used but contain data that needs to be kept.
The data can be read by specialised software that is installed on the servers.
I'm thinking of running up a Linux box and having these servers run as VMs on the Linux box so the data can still be accessed.
Remember licensing. MS Server is licensed after physical cores on the hypervisor, not the VMs. So moving from a physical server to a virtual might require higher licensing costs.
Same goes for the software that's on these servers. You have to know what it is and how it's licensed.
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
I'm not a Linuxer
I think you are better of with vmware essentials. It's low cost and don't have all the bells and whistles but there is a lot of people in the "windows world" that can manage it and you don't need any linux knowledge at all.
We use xcp-ng & xenserver and while it has a windows client for managing that is really good, you still need to be able to do things in linux to get by. Same thing with proxmox.
So for a windows shop with people that has windows knowledge, vmware makes more sense. Even if there are options that gives you more value for money.
But I suggest starting to play with some linux virtualization in your home lab.
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thanks for the help @Pete-S I appreciate it.
I'm not worried about any MS licensing, the old servers will just be used for reference should any need ever arise for the data on the servers to be looked at in the future, they won't be in production and will likely stay shut down.
That's why I was looking at an open source virtualisation platform, I was wanting to come up with a solution that wouldn't cost much, if anything, and have no licensing issues.
Again, thanks for the help.
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@black3dynamite thanks for your help black3dynamite, I really appreciate it.
What's the relationship between xcp-ng and Xen Orchestra? Doesn't XCP-NG have adequate management functionality on its own, or does it, but it's hard to use?
Just wondering what advantage Xen Orchestra offers???
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
@black3dynamite thanks for your help black3dynamite, I really appreciate it.
What's the relationship between xcp-ng and Xen Orchestra? Doesn't XCP-NG have adequate management functionality on its own, or does it, but it's hard to use?
Just wondering what advantage Xen Orchestra offers???
Xen Orchestra was their original product. It's a web based management platform for XenServer.
XCP-NG, being the open source compilation of XenServer, has the same management tools as XenServer. A windows based installed program and a local tui.
So Xen Orchestra to either system is a big plus in that you are no longer tied to a single OS for managing the system remotely. In addition to all the other features it brings, like patch management and backups. @DustinB3403 install instructions and script still work great https://mangolassi.it/topic/12809/xen-orchestra-community-edition-installing-with-yarn
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@travisdh1 Thanks travisdh1, that's a great help, slowly building up my knowledge base.
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@travisdh1
++ XO also exposes and simplifies a lot of functionality that would otherwise require mucking around in the xen CLI -
@notverypunny said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
@travisdh1
++ XO also exposes and simplifies a lot of functionality that would otherwise require mucking around in the xen CLIUnfortunately XO also lack some of the features that the native windows clients has. Like custom fields for the VMs. Something we use all the time.
XO is also much slower than the native client for certain use cases. And it lacks the powerful tree structures that the native window client has. They're working on a new UI I think. XO is also resource intensive, much more so than many other web interfaces, but that's a minor thing.
For us the management tools matter. If xcp-ng drops the powerful windows client, we will migrate to something else, probably KVM. KVM has more mature tools for automation as well but we use our own scripts for xen so we get by.
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Just installed Proxmox on a Dell T620 with 4 x 600GB physical disks.
Proxmox tells me this:
When I installed I didn't install any RAID option, I just chose the default.
I know this is elementary for you linux guys, but is that telling me that it has used 3 of the disks to create a volume of size 557.87GB?
If not and it's only using 1 physical disk, how can I add more disks for Proxmox to use?
Thanks for any help.
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
Just installed Proxmox on a Dell T620 with 4 x 600GB physical disks.
Proxmox tells me this:
When I installed I didn't install any RAID option, I just chose the default.
I know this is elementary for you linux guys, but is that telling me that it has used 3 of the disks to create a volume of size 557.87GB?
If not and it's only using 1 physical disk, how can I add more disks for Proxmox to use?
Thanks for any help.
You must be looking at LVM under Disks because that’s normal. Take a look at LVM-Thin under Disks.
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
When I installed I didn't install any RAID option, I just chose the default.
Default is to assume that you are using hardware RAID, that's by far the standard in the SMB and micro-computer industries. No one is going to do software RAID as a default as there's almost never a case where people want that - to the point where VMware has no accommodation for software RAID and Hyper-V has no production ready software RAID options. So while ProxMox has solid enterprise grade software RAID, the ecosystem that they are used in will rarely want to use it, it's nearly a foregone conclusion in the micro-server space that hardware RAID will always be used (because of VMware, Hyper-V, and Windows needing it.)
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
I know this is elementary for you linux guys, but is that telling me that it has used 3 of the disks to create a volume of size 557.87GB?
LVs are logical volumes. This isn't a Linux thing, this is the same on every OS including Windows. LVs are what we've used since the late 1990s instead of partitions. They are a more powerful mechanism with abstraction and no direct tie to the hardware.
Windows confusingly uses LVs but doesn't label them that, instead they call them "dynamic disks". But LV is the generic term that applies in all cases.
So your PVE system is saying that on the physical partition /dev/sda3 you have a logical volume manager (e.g. using dynamic disks) and it is split into three volumes. The total size of the physical device is 557GB and all of it has been used by the volume manager at this point. That's all it is saying.
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
If not and it's only using 1 physical disk, how can I add more disks for Proxmox to use?
The way you WANT to do it is to put them into RAID. Do you not have hardware RAID? If not, that's fine. Just think of it as "doing something complex enough that VMware and Hyper-V don't really accommodate it, technically Hyper-V does, just not in a way you should trust yet and has a train wreck of a track record.)
But, in general, RAID isn't another thing you'd want to be learning here. Treat it like VMware or Hyper-V and stick to hardware RAID that takes care of all of this for you.
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Thanks for the info Scott, I appreciate it.
It's the next day now, what I was wondering yesterday was had Proxmox created a RAID set out of the 4 disks in the server? The confusion came about as what Proxmox seemed to be telling me yesterday was it had used 3 disks, which to me looked like a RAID set with the capacity of a single physical disk.So I was wondering if it had created a mirror with a hot spare???
If it hasn't done that, then I'd like to add the extra disks for Proxmox to use so I can learn about Proxmox as I play, this is just a lab server.
This is what is shown under LVM-Thin
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
Thanks for the info Scott, I appreciate it.
It's the next day now, what I was wondering yesterday was had Proxmox created a RAID set out of the 4 disks in the server? The confusion came about as what Proxmox seemed to be telling me yesterday was it had used 3 disks, which to me looked like a RAID set with the capacity of a single physical disk.So I was wondering if it had created a mirror with a hot spare???
If it hasn't done that, then I'd like to add the extra disks for Proxmox to use so I can learn about Proxmox as I play, this is just a lab server.
This is what is shown under LVM-Thin
That looks like a single drive to me. Can't be sure without seeing the outputs from
zpool status -l -
@siringo During the installation setup you do have an option to use raid by using ZFS but it’s not selected by default. I’ve never used it because I’m using hardware raid.
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@black3dynamite said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
@siringo During the installation setup you do have an option to use raid by using ZFS but it’s not selected by default. I’ve never used it because I’m using hardware raid.
Yep I can remember looking at that option when installing, but it came up with a message along the lines of "that option is not supported etc" so I just went with the default.
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@siringo said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
@black3dynamite said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
@siringo During the installation setup you do have an option to use raid by using ZFS but it’s not selected by default. I’ve never used it because I’m using hardware raid.
Yep I can remember looking at that option when installing, but it came up with a message along the lines of "that option is not supported etc" so I just went with the default.
The defaults we're very likely no raid at all and to use a single disk.
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@travisdh1 said in Windows Servers Archived onto Linux, suggestions/help pls:
That looks like a single drive to me. Can't be sure without seeing the outputs from zpool status -l
No zpools by default.
