Managing Hyper-V
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
WebVirtMgr (http://retspen.github.io/) is what I use if I need a web Browser... otherwise, I just use the Virtual Machine Manager.
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
The Scale HC3 gives you a web interface to your Windows that runs on top of it.
But you can put Guacamole in front of that.
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@dafyre said in Managing Hyper-V:
@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
WebVirtMgr (http://retspen.github.io/) is what I use if I need a web Browser... otherwise, I just use the Virtual Machine Manager.
Really? That looks too good to be true...
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@dafyre said in Managing Hyper-V:
@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
WebVirtMgr (http://retspen.github.io/) is what I use if I need a web Browser... otherwise, I just use the Virtual Machine Manager.
Really? That looks too good to be true...
To be fair, everything truly awesome looks too good to be true until we get used to using it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@dafyre said in Managing Hyper-V:
@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
WebVirtMgr (http://retspen.github.io/) is what I use if I need a web Browser... otherwise, I just use the Virtual Machine Manager.
Really? That looks too good to be true...
To be fair, everything truly awesome looks too good to be true until we get used to using it.
And then everything else looks like scorched earth. . .
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Why does no one port awesome stuff like this to Hyper-V? Hyper-V seriously gets no love.
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@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Why does no one port awesome stuff like this to Hyper-V? Hyper-V seriously gets no love.
Because they're all afraid that MS is going to ruin it for them.
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@DustinB3403 said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Why does no one port awesome stuff like this to Hyper-V? Hyper-V seriously gets no love.
Because they're all afraid that MS is going to ruin it for them.
Good point, so instead they ruin it for MS. Ha ha
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Maybe there will be something soon with how MS is starting to open source things.
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@dafyre said in Managing Hyper-V:
@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
Sure, we can use the Scale to manage Hyper-V, but it's hard to believe that that is the answer for such a giant ecosystem - it needs external support for remote management. XenServer + XenOrchestra, Scale, KVM with different tools, etc. have secure web management interfaces for this stuff so that they can be used in a non-LAN setting natively and easily.
@scottalanmiller What free tools allow you to view console and manage KVM and VMs running on KVM, over HTML5 (or remotely via web)?
WebVirtMgr (http://retspen.github.io/) is what I use if I need a web Browser... otherwise, I just use the Virtual Machine Manager.
Really? That looks too good to be true...
It's no Scale interface, to be sure, but it does work relatively well and you can get console access to the machines too. It also supports multiple servers as well.
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@scottalanmiller really, yeah.
The MS platform only gets developers who are out for a buck. (nothing against you @StarWind_Software)
Open source software, while capable on any OS (usually) rarely starts there as well as the stigma of "Open Source?!" that is stifling the entire market space.
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
Maybe there will be something soon with how MS is starting to open source things.
It's true, they are really changing.
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@Tim_G I've seen something that looks strikingly similar for ESXi (Maybe it's just every angular node.js app looks the same). Note these UI's are REALLY limited to only the most absolute basics of management (Partly because it takes YEARS to build a "full feature" UI for the 200K+ API calls that a hypervisor platform can perform, and when done on a platform with notoriously changing API's (KVM historically) this only works when you control the full stack (and even then Scale and AVH both are still focused on the 10% that are 90% of your workflow).
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Because Microsoft has a long history of undercutting their ecosystem by...
- Breaking API's on purpose to sabotage people (Novel admins still hold a grudge).
- Competing with partners.
- Locking out partner ecosystems (Azure/Azure Stack freezes out backup providers that don't run in guest VM agents).
- Screwing with partners and customers by changing PnP to crazy pants stuff (See VDI licensing that caused MVP's to quit the program, Azure Stack pricing that will FORCE opex pricing even for private cloud deployments with your own hardware). It's like they watched VMware with vRAM and said "hold my beer".
- Killing products that support the SMB space in ham-fisted ways.
- Their slow attempt to break Skype and force me to use S4B that I'm still annoyed with
- Creating products that need 3rd party ecosystems with unique requirements for hardware/software (Storage Spaces) then abandoning that product (Storage Spaces Direct abandonment of Shared SAS backplane).
- Complete lack of quality control on the ecosystem. a 5 pack of American Light beer and a back rub will get your drivers signed.
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@John-Nicholson said in Managing Hyper-V:
Because Microsoft has a long history of undercutting their ecosystem by...
What's funny is, so often they just drive people away. They've made me, without owning an XBOX for years, truly hate the XBox and all MS gaming, uninstall Skype from everywhere and totally ignore S4B (do they still offer that, Teams replaced it!)
What's shocking is that anyone keeps going to them. Even when they do things well, it's only so well. I mean Server 2016 is solid, but... is that enough? I can never find a good time to use it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
What's funny is, so often they just drive people away. They've made me, without owning an XBOX for years, truly hate the XBox and all MS gaming, uninstall Skype from everywhere and totally ignore S4B (do they still offer that, Teams replaced it!)
Teams didn't replace S4B. Teams is a Slack Competitor. S4B never had a functioning multi-user chat.
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@John-Nicholson said in Managing Hyper-V:
@scottalanmiller said in Managing Hyper-V:
What's funny is, so often they just drive people away. They've made me, without owning an XBOX for years, truly hate the XBox and all MS gaming, uninstall Skype from everywhere and totally ignore S4B (do they still offer that, Teams replaced it!)
Teams didn't replace S4B. Teams is a Slack Competitor. S4B never had a functioning multi-user chat.
It did, they just didn't allow us to use it in O365. I used to use it all the time.
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Turns out, WebVirtMgr was too good to be true. I couldn't get it working on Fedora 26 or Fedora 25. Hours wasted.
I looked at Proxmox, but that's a Debian "appliance". I'm not using Debian in enterprise and don't want to. No time wasted, didn't bother.
oVirt wouldn't even install on Fedora 26 or 25. Apparently it's built for Fedora 24, I'm not going there. Even then, it doesn't seem like it would install. Time wasted trying to get it working. Packages were updated as of yesterday, so I was thinking they would work. I was wrong.
Briefly looked into Scale... I don't see any package or rpm to install. They want you to use an appliance or something. Not interested.
So much non-working stuff. There were others, but not for enterprise Linux such as RHEL/Fedora based. Everyone tries out their projects, and just abandons them, or they make it so hard to install and it's just insanely unstable.
I'd rather it be like the Windows ecosystem... where it either works great and has great support, even free versions, (StarWind for example), or it simply doesn't exist.
Moving on, I did find Kimchi. I don't remember if that was mentioned in this thread, if so, thank you... but I found it mentioned somewhere on the net.
Kimchi... easy to install, webpage up and working out-of-box if you know what I mean. I don't know if it "technically works" because I'm testing it on Fedora 25 that is a VM itself... but at least I am able to log in to the web page, and see a nice what-seems-to-be-working interface:
Well... it was working. I just went to grab a screenshot to show how great it was (what was I thinking?).. but now this:
I may be able to get it working better on a fresh install, so I won't dismiss it yet... but still, no viable options on Linux for web-based VM management / console access either.
It may be financially better to install Hyper-V (free) and pay for 5nine... labor costs a lot to mess with all this non-working and non-applicable stuff.
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@Tim_G said in Managing Hyper-V:
Turns out, WebVirtMgr was too good to be true. I couldn't get it working on Fedora 26 or Fedora 25. Hours wasted.
I looked at Proxmox, but that's a Debian "appliance". I'm not using Debian in enterprise and don't want to. No time wasted, didn't bother.
oVirt wouldn't even install on Fedora 26 or 25. Apparently it's built for Fedora 24, I'm not going there. Even then, it doesn't seem like it would install. Time wasted trying to get it working. Packages were updated as of yesterday, so I was thinking they would work. I was wrong.
Briefly looked into Scale... I don't see any package or rpm to install. They want you to use an appliance or something. Not interested.
So much non-working stuff. There were others, but not for enterprise Linux such as RHEL/Fedora based. Everyone tries out their projects, and just abandons them, or they make it so hard to install and it's just insanely unstable.
I'd rather it be like the Windows ecosystem... where it either works great and has great support, even free versions, (StarWind for example), or it simply doesn't exist.
Moving on, I did find Kimchi. I don't remember if that was mentioned in this thread, if so, thank you... but I found it mentioned somewhere on the net.
Kimchi... easy to install, webpage up and working out-of-box if you know what I mean. I don't know if it "technically works" because I'm testing it on Fedora 25 that is a VM itself... but at least I am able to log in to the web page, and see a nice what-seems-to-be-working interface:
Well... it was working. I just went to grab a screenshot to show how great it was (what was I thinking?).. but now this:
I may be able to get it working better on a fresh install, so I won't dismiss it yet... but still, no viable options on Linux for web-based VM management / console access either.
It may be financially better to install Hyper-V (free) and pay for 5nine... labor costs a lot to mess with all this non-working and non-applicable stuff.
At $600 one time fee for vSphere essentials starts to sound real nice about now also. He'll even SCCM-VMM at ~8K isn't awful compared to something that MIGHT work on your OS today but not survive an upgrade.
It's kinda bizarre because enterprises with large scale pay for managemnt tools (and are better positioned to write their own/script stuff). SMBs where they lack the in house bench and depth to operalize free are the ones always trying it. Now to be fair enterprises getting 80% off because of their scale, and they are better poised to leverage some features do shift the value to running comedical software.
Im curious why you don't like appliances?
As a consultant when I saw a solo SMB admin wasting 60% of his time messing with stuff that should have been taking up 2% it was hard to Disagree with the management decision to replace him with a MSP.
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@John-Nicholson said in Managing Hyper-V:
At $600 one time fee for vSphere essentials starts to sound real nice about now also. He'll even SCCM-VMM at ~8K isn't awful compared to something that MIGHT work on your OS today but not survive an upgrade.
The idea was to find something for free, as in this thread Linux and KVM were being very highly praised on having so many great viable free options for web-based VM management and console access... and where Microsoft was being put down for not having this.
I have found it to be the opposite, actually... or nearly the same. If you want to spend money, Microsoft and Linux both have what seem like great software available to remotely manage your VMs. If you want free options, almost nothing exists for Hyper-V, and the free options available for Linux are pretty much non-starters unless you go Debian-based or use outdated Linux distros.
@John-Nicholson said in Managing Hyper-V:
As a consultant when I saw a solo SMB admin wasting 60% of his time messing with stuff that should have been taking up 2% it was hard to Disagree with the management decision to replace him with a MSP.
It's Saturday, I don't work on Saturdays. I'm trying this stuff on my own time, in my own lab for "fun". I enjoy this stuff as a hobby in addition to doing it for work. I wanted to see how usable it is and whether or not it would fit in a circumstance that a VM needs to run on KVM and not Hyper-V. But I agree, this kind of stuff should only take up 2% of your time... if it takes more, it's a non-starter... which is where most Linux software projects (such as finding web-based KVM management) seems to lead.
