Some questions about virtualization.
Hi I have some questions about virtualization. 1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? 2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Docker containers? 3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers? 4. Problems, challenges, thoughts? Tips, hints, guides welcome;) Przemek Kosinski -- ************************************************* Powiatowa i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Skarżysku-Kamiennej www: www.biblioteka24.eu mail: p.kosinski@biblioteka24.eu *************************************************
Hi, We at Biblibre use LXD with Ubuntu Xenial as host and guest. Super powerfull with a huge scalability, we run 50 Koha on one server. In each container, unix user is always the same which makes scripting very easy. We use images to backup and create test/dev containers. PS : to show lxd env in prompt we used a trick : "hostname -A" in PS1 instead of "hostname". Regards, Le 18/09/2017 à 12:03, Przemek Kosiński a écrit :
Hi I have some questions about virtualization.
1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? 2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Docker containers? 3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers? 4. Problems, challenges, thoughts?
Tips, hints, guides welcome;) Przemek Kosinski
-- Fridolin SOMERS Biblibre - Pôles support et système fridolin.somers@biblibre.com
Hi Przemek,
1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? We do, yes.
2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Proxmox with ceph storage.
4. Problems, challenges, thoughts? There are no differences with bare-metal, as far as we know. Only the many benefits that virtualisation gives you. :-)
MJ
Hi Przemek
1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers?
I have installed about ten productive Koha instances so far. All of them are on virtualized hosts.
2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Docker containers?
I never choose the solution myself, but the responsible IT department of the library does. To my knowledge, some used Vmware, some LXC, some Proxmox VE, of some I even don't know it and until now there was never reason to care about it (as long as the people at the IT department know what they're doing). My own Koha demo installation (koha.adminkuhn.ch) is virtualized with Proxmox and hosted by an external IT provider (Contabo). This setup has 2 CPU, 6 GB RAM, 500 GB harddisk and costs me less than 100 Euro per year. For my own local Koha test installations I usually use Virtualbox.
3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers?
Both.
4. Problems, challenges, thoughts?
Generally the same problems as with physical machines but of course, a virtual machine can never be as fast as a physical machine. Also there may be problems if too many virtual machines are sitting on the same host resp. if some of them are eating up CPU etc. So if you need total control and maximum power there's still nothing better than hardware - but usually you won't need that, so the benefits of virtualization (especially backups) will outweigh everything else. Besides, there are only minor problems with virtualization, for example Best wishes: Michael -- Geschäftsführer · Diplombibliothekar BBS, Informatiker eidg. Fachausweis Admin Kuhn GmbH · Pappelstrasse 20 · 4123 Allschwil · Schweiz T 0041 (0)61 261 55 61 · E mik@adminkuhn.ch · W www.adminkuhn.ch
I have done a fair bit with different ones of these. 1) Yes 2) I will spend most of my time discussing this below. Skipping this answer for the moment. 3) Koha works fine on virtualized servers, so long as the host machine is powerful enough to run it. For the most part, you never realize a service is on a virtualized server, unless your virtualization environment has issues. Choosing a virtualization environment: The first rule is to *use what you are familiar with*. If all your techies are Windows people, use Hypervisor. If they are all Linux, use one of the Linux ones KVM, Proxmox, etc. If you already have a VMWare presence, then you can add Koha to your VMWare host. Containers are a linux-only thing. If you go to install them on Windows, it creates a Linux VM under which the containers run. Containers work very nicely if you have lots and lots of machines, or if you are really strapped for CPU power But if you have never used containers before, the learning curve is a lot steeper than you might think. Remember, not only do you need to get a server running, but you need to be able to back it up. If you are starting into Virtualization, the first question is what operating systems do you know. The Linux hosting options are very nice if you know Linux pretty well. Proxmox, for example, is a paid-for GUI that you can use to access the free Linux KVM stuff. Linux does that all for free, but the interface is either harder to set up, or very manual. You can use an openstack or cloudstack, but those are very complex and awkward to maintain if you are new at virtualization. I like Linux, and I use Linux VMs all the time. But, more people prefer hypervisor or VMWare because they have much nicer user interfaces. As nice as virtualization is, you need to get something you can manage. No server is "turn it on and forget it." All servers require backing up, upgrading, and the like. With Virtualization, you want to be able to take snapshots and access the machine "console" if it has an issue booting. Windows licenses are always a pain. I think "understanding licensing" is the biggest complaint I hear from people who use Windows Hypervisor. And it can get fairly expensive. The biggest complaint I hear from Linux people is the interface and trying to manage the machine from a Windows platform. The biggest complaint I hear from VMWare people is that it is hard to manage the computer from a machine that you do not have everything set up on. And, the VMWare licenses usually end up costing a fair bit more than you anticipated. You may notice I did not mention Oracle Virtualbox as an option. Many people are tempted to use it since it appears to be free. It does have a lot of features, but it does not scale well in the server world. And, you are supposed to pay for it if you are using it for servers. It is an awesome virtualization environment for testing and for use for yourself, but the free setup is missing a lot of features (like, starting VMs at boot) which you expect out of a server platform. I have never use it in a paid-for environment; I am sure it would work well, but it is the one platform I have not used myself. My 2c. - Tim Young On 9/18/2017 5:03 AM, Przemek.KosiA@LightSys.org wrote:
Hi I have some questions about virtualization.
1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? 2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Docker containers? 3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers? 4. Problems, challenges, thoughts?
Tips, hints, guides welcome;) Przemek Kosinski
"The biggest complaint I hear from VMWare people is that it is hard to manage the computer from a machine that you do not have everything set up on. And, the VMWare licenses usually end up costing a fair bit more than you anticipated." ---the flip side.....ESXi is still free. I have run and entire school district off 3-4 EXSi servers for a number of years.... I truly just don't need all the bells/whistles (and cost) of the fully licensed VMware products. ESXi 6 (latest version) runs from a web browser...no special client needed. ESXi -- free...Koha ---free.....all you have to purchase is the hardware. I have run 3 Koha VM's off ESXi for a few years now....no issues that could be attributed to a virtual infrastructure. On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 8:02 AM, Tim Young <Tim.Young@lightsys.org> wrote:
I have done a fair bit with different ones of these.
1) Yes
2) I will spend most of my time discussing this below. Skipping this answer for the moment.
3) Koha works fine on virtualized servers, so long as the host machine is powerful enough to run it. For the most part, you never realize a service is on a virtualized server, unless your virtualization environment has issues.
Choosing a virtualization environment:
The first rule is to *use what you are familiar with*. If all your techies are Windows people, use Hypervisor. If they are all Linux, use one of the Linux ones KVM, Proxmox, etc. If you already have a VMWare presence, then you can add Koha to your VMWare host.
Containers are a linux-only thing. If you go to install them on Windows, it creates a Linux VM under which the containers run. Containers work very nicely if you have lots and lots of machines, or if you are really strapped for CPU power But if you have never used containers before, the learning curve is a lot steeper than you might think. Remember, not only do you need to get a server running, but you need to be able to back it up.
If you are starting into Virtualization, the first question is what operating systems do you know. The Linux hosting options are very nice if you know Linux pretty well. Proxmox, for example, is a paid-for GUI that you can use to access the free Linux KVM stuff. Linux does that all for free, but the interface is either harder to set up, or very manual. You can use an openstack or cloudstack, but those are very complex and awkward to maintain if you are new at virtualization. I like Linux, and I use Linux VMs all the time. But, more people prefer hypervisor or VMWare because they have much nicer user interfaces. As nice as virtualization is, you need to get something you can manage. No server is "turn it on and forget it." All servers require backing up, upgrading, and the like. With Virtualization, you want to be able to take snapshots and access the machine "console" if it has an issue booting.
Windows licenses are always a pain. I think "understanding licensing" is the biggest complaint I hear from people who use Windows Hypervisor. And it can get fairly expensive.
The biggest complaint I hear from Linux people is the interface and trying to manage the machine from a Windows platform.
The biggest complaint I hear from VMWare people is that it is hard to manage the computer from a machine that you do not have everything set up on. And, the VMWare licenses usually end up costing a fair bit more than you anticipated.
You may notice I did not mention Oracle Virtualbox as an option. Many people are tempted to use it since it appears to be free. It does have a lot of features, but it does not scale well in the server world. And, you are supposed to pay for it if you are using it for servers. It is an awesome virtualization environment for testing and for use for yourself, but the free setup is missing a lot of features (like, starting VMs at boot) which you expect out of a server platform. I have never use it in a paid-for environment; I am sure it would work well, but it is the one platform I have not used myself.
My 2c.
- Tim Young
On 9/18/2017 5:03 AM, Przemek.KosiA@LightSys.org wrote:
Hi I have some questions about virtualization.
1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? 2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or Docker containers? 3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers? 4. Problems, challenges, thoughts?
Tips, hints, guides welcome;) Przemek Kosinski
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participants (6)
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Fridolin SOMERS -
lists -
Michael Kuhn -
Przemek Kosiński -
Scott Owen -
Tim Young