Oh, I forgot, I also have a spare IBM Storwize v3700… maybe I can connect it via its SAS expansions port to the server RAID controller, so it can be used as JBOD?

PS: this storage is under support, but has already failed two times…

I have a spare x3550m4 (64Gb of ram, single CPU, no raid controller), and I want to build a backup repository for our growing Veeam backups. I’m thinking about getting some Broadcom raid controller (any ideam of what can be the best fit for ~20Tb?), and I’m torn between using the 8 internal 2.5 slot or buying also an external JBOD, but I cannot find enclosure of my taste… any suggestion?

What? Some of our content is not supported in the ODF file format. And of course we cannot have a double standard.

I’ve tried hard pushing LO in my own company, and the result was like that:

1. Power users cannot do some tricky stuff with pivot tables and macros, so they eventually switch back to office;
2. Basic users need to open common files with the power users, so it was a big mess of weird formatting, formulas not working etc.
3. Customers sometime submits spreadsheets that won’t work on LO.

After two years, I just give up and give o365 to everyone. Maybe a company made of just tech peoples exchanging mails only with other techie can use efficiently LO or even a custom LaTeX template, pure markdown etc, but real companies aren’t like that.

@tim_g said in KVM VM Replication:

@brianlittlejohn said in KVM VM Replication:

I may be asking this prematurely, I'm about to start playing around with KVM. Is there a replication feature similar to HyperV replication baked into KVM natively?

Yes

Do you mean DRBD?

Weechat. Is much better and modern than IRSSI.

Sorry, my mobile browser makes a mess but now it's ok :D.

Here we are, 5 years later…

Just an old thread in which I was arguing of KVM being the best thing since sliced bread…
Luckly, I remain of the same idea and continue to experience with KVM till today.

I just want to give credit to @scottalanmiller for have brought me to know the VMware and Xen world, at that time :).

Thank you Scott, your claims have significantly boost my IT career, even if we did not agree at all!

Maybe it's the biggest new of the year for the whole industry.

@jimmy9008 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

I have a laptop, but no real home lab. I have done the odd thing I've been really interested in, but not often.

IMO, if I need to learn something for work - I learn at work/on the job.
If I don't need to learn something 'IT' for work, i'm most likely not going to spend time learning it at home - I have no use for it.

^ of course, at the point it is needed for work, if, then I will learn at work as its needed.

Why spend valuable free time with family learning something that you will possibly never ever use. Learn something when its needed and save wasted time learning something that's never needed.

I don’t think you can really learn something about enterprise virtualization in a limited amount of time, from scratch, and just because your company told you. You need a sort of lab to do trial-error, before making havoc in production.

@kuyaz said in Dell R720 Display problem with Fedora 26 server:

@scottalanmiller yes thats what i think of. so @Francesco-Provino statement is incorrect? : One last thing: raid 1 on standard SATA hdd is gonna be slow. Quite slow.

@kuyaz a 7200rpm (I hope) drive is slow by today standard, even more for a virtualization lab. Today's standard is SSD.

@kuyaz said in Fedora 26 + XEN + EFI = multiboot error:

ok will give it a shot after i give up with fedora
maybe will try centos also as i am abit more familiar with centos. I also feel there are more online reference for centos compared to fedora. maybe it is just me

Fedora / CentOS removed part of the Xen compatibility in favour of KVM years ago. Of course you can still do a Xen host with CentOS, but it could be harder than with SUSE or Ubuntu.

@kuyaz I suggest OpenSuSe if you want to play with Xen. Don’t forget about the dom0 vga passthrough story.

@kuyaz said in Dell R720 Display problem with Fedora 26 server:

1. Setup RAID-1 via PERC for 2 x 4TB HDD
2. Install Fedora 26 Server from USB Boot
3. LVM only 20GB out of 4TB for Fedora VM Host (Xen/KVM)
4. Partition :
   1. root (LVM with xfs) 17GB
   2. boot (LVM with xfs) 1GB,
   3. swap (LVM with swap) 2GB

Please correct if my setup is fine. still learning

Should I partition 20GB and leave the free space for VM guest LVM? or I do 4TB during the install, and put VM host as image file?
CMIIW.

Thanks.

One last thing: raid 1 on standard SATA hdd is gonna be slow. Quite slow.

@kuyaz said in Dell R720 Display problem with Fedora 26 server:

1. Setup RAID-1 via PERC for 2 x 4TB HDD
2. Install Fedora 26 Server from USB Boot
3. LVM only 20GB out of 4TB for Fedora VM Host (Xen/KVM)
4. Partition :
   1. root (LVM with xfs) 17GB
   2. boot (LVM with xfs) 1GB,
   3. swap (LVM with swap) 2GB

Please correct if my setup is fine. still learning

Should I partition 20GB and leave the free space for VM guest LVM? or I do 4TB during the install, and put VM host as image file?
CMIIW.

Thanks.

You have to choose between storing the VM in LVM partition directly or in files. LVM is very solid and a little faster. The file backend is also solid today, and a lot more flexible; I suggest to use XFS as a base filesystem.
PV the whole disk array anyway.

Remeber, both thin LVM and non-preallocated QCOW files will slow the write operations A LOT.

@kuyaz said in Dell R720 Display problem with Fedora 26 server:

@francesco-provino do you know how to bypass the HW RAID in DELL R720?
I want to use SW raid instead with MD.

Thanks.

I agree with Scott here. If the PERC is already in place, you can’t beat it with an HDD-only setup. Stay with the PERC.

@kuyaz said in Dell R720 Display problem with Fedora 26 server:

@francesco-provino i assumae your idrac is enterprise license? mine is express only sad... haha...
official price of the idrac enterprise license is 400$ ++ .... -.-

That servers have iDrac enterprise, but that’s not the point: you can still use serial redirection, even with the most basic IPMI-compliant machine. I have a super-basic T110 with BMC only and it does IPMI serial redirection pretty well. It’s actually one of my fedora-kvm machine.

If I understand well, you are trying to install a full GUI in the hypervisor layer of your server. I’m sorry, but this is just plain wrong.
You should only install a bare minimum Fedora and KVM tools on bare metal, period.
The typical server is just not good with graphical stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you are experimenting a KVM environment, but don’t treat it as your old bare metal windows 2008 server.
Just to be clear, the right path to install and manage an enterprise server like the r720 does NOT include connecting any display, EVER.

First thing, you should use the management interface iDrac, that provides you vga-like and terminal access to the server on a web interface. You can even mount ISOs directly from your laptop, the time of burning cd/usb is over!
I’ve deployed two r740 this way two months ago, mounting the VMware ISO through wifi (!).

The other thing is, you don’t have to install any management GUI or tools in the bare metal system, ever. All the management should be done from another machine, that has the management stack. VMware (that I don’t love, but is the gold standard regarding some best practices) makes it clear from the beginning; no GUI, useless busybox on the host, everything is done through the management appliance (the vCenter).

Regarding Fedora, I use it for some of my server and the protocol is:

• install and upgrade the host OS with KVM and its tools;
• harden ssh disabling password login, enable ropt access or anther user that can became root (as of today you MUST use root to start the VM on the host, the user-based qemu connection is flawed in many ways including networking);
• install the KVM management layer (usually libvirt) and your gui of choice (virt-manager) into ANOTHER machine and connect those with the host via key-paired, passwordless ssh.

@kuyaz said in KVM vs XenServer:

Hi all, for example my server has 16 core & 64gb RAM.

Just wondering, how many active VM I can run on those core actually? assuming for each VM I allocate 1GB, can I run 64 active VM with 1 virtual core each?

Can memory be shared also between VM?

When i said active, it is online but not in heavy usage.

It depends on the load, of course. Regarding the CPU, you can easily run 50+ VMs if they are idle. The CPU time is shared between the instance, so the overcommitment is very granular and efficient. Regarding the RAM, XenServer is not very good at RAM overcommitment by default; KVM instead can do a very nice job with similar instances, saving plenty of ram with KSM.