Anyone Actually Using Virtual Linux Servers?

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On 9/8/07, Jarod Wilson <jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Of course, putting 16 drives in a RAID0 array is an insanely bad
> idea, due to the high probability of drive failure and the data loss
> on all 64 guests... I certainly wouldn't call it ideal, anyhow... :)
> I'm a big fan of RAID6 these days.

Well, in mine and his case, the data is not that important.  The data
lives for a little while, and then becomes irrelevant.  Thus, RAID6
would actually be detrimental.  And as we know from Google's research,
just backup frequently and store your data in at least three
locations, rather than using RAID.  Of course, if you have highly
critical servers, you would not do this.  But, in those cases, you
have more expensive, and "ideal" solutions, such as VMware ESX Server
with VMotion...

> As for xen... I'd not touch it outside of an implementation with long-
> term support (i.e., RHEL5 or SLES10, not sure if Ubuntu 6.06 LTS has
> xen or not), where you have something of an assurance that updating
> your host OS isn't going to make your guests asplode...

This is one of the reasons why such virtualization technologies should
be carefully considered.  Such a scenario would not occur in VMware,
since the guest is not intimately tied to the host.  You already
should know this because your kernel image is appended with -xen.
That should give you a hint.  Maybe kvm will work better for you when
it is more mainstream, as there is less dependency.  Until then, you
can use VMware, which is merely a virtualized disk image, with no
kernel interdependency.

And Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS will appear next April for those
looking to upgrade from Ubuntu Dapper...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen

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