[Koha] Some questions about virtualization.

[Scott Owen]

"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 at 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 at 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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