Virtual Windows workstation run on a headless CentOS server running KVM with ...

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StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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I haven't decided that yet. I'm not building a server here. This is more of a lab. I will most probably swap boot drives and experiment with different plateforms. The main reason that kept me away from VMware is I thought a discrete disk controller was needed. Now that I understand this isn't the case so why not give it a go ? The plan right now is to have *something* running that can host a Napp-it/OmniOS appliance so I can finally get started with ZFS like the big boys here. My understanding is I'll be able to mount and share my ZFS pool from whatever hypervisor I like as long as I can passthrough the onboard controller to some virtual storage appliance (correct me if I'm wrong). Long story short, I thought I'd be running ESXi faster than OmniOS (which I now doubt).
 
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StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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Alright I guess that's it for tonight. I'm pretty happy with this build so far. It's cool I can have the boot disk in the hot swap bay and still connect it to the internal USB port.
 

TangoWhiskey9

Active Member
Jun 28, 2013
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I think you should build and then iterate. There is actually a bit of personal preference involved in platforms.

BTW - I found this forum based on the STH ESXi customizer guides.
 

StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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Well I need to be proficient with Microsoft and VMware technologies at work but as a Open Source enthusiast, I'm very much interested in GNU/Linux and KVM as a virtualization plateform. I am also some kind of a purist so I'm obviously attracted to Solaris based ZFS servers (plus I'll need to set up ZFS at work soon). All in all, I'm interested in pretty much everything you guys post about here and I'm out to learn it all.

I guess I'd still enjoy an OmniOS home setup more. Maybe I should stick with this idea. I'm just a little concerned I might not be able to get much help when I need it since, despite being the base of the next ZFS All-in-One, I can't read about many people running this anywhere yet.
 
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Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
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Watch out with Vmwarez. On installations and updates it tends to dd the disks with the FS that they use. Poor-mens dual booting with multiple disks may not work like you expect. Just wanted to throw that one out there.

You don't really need support with Omni OS as the virtualisation base, KVM in this case, is well supported along the board.
 
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StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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That's good to know thanks. I'm installing OmniOS again right now. I found an old 30Gb SSD I ca use as a boot disk.
 

StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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Thinking this through, why would I need my boot disk so small and connected through USB ? If I was to pass the disk controller to a storage VM like required with ESXi, then this would make some sense but in this scenario where VMs are run from OmniOS itself, what am I even trying to achieve ?
 
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Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
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There are not a whole lot of reasons to do that. You could look into combining a quicker disk with a slow sd card/usb stick to get poor-mens redundancy without a serious performance hit, although that by itself is quite useless too.
 

StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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This would be interesting Indeed though I'd need to run VMs from some ESX like datastore then which isn't the plan here. Again, thanks, that's good to know.
 
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StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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Napp-it installed just fine. I now need to figure out which features will be gone in 30 days.
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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StephD

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Dec 17, 2013
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Napp-it installed just fine. I now need to figure out which features will be gone in 30 days.
Seems fine. I like how paid extensions aren't required for home use. I'd still like one could start with a community edition from the begining.
 
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gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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Seems fine. I like how paid extensions aren't required for home use. I'd still like one could start with a community edition from the begining.
Just delete the evalkey
Menu extension > register > edit
 

StephD

Member
Dec 17, 2013
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Phpvirtualbox installed fine. It was a bit of a pain (couldn't connect host cdrom drive from vm and mouse tracking in console was nightmare) but I'm pretty happy with everything so far. I couldn't find a way to boot vm at startup yet but it must be somewhere.
 
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StephD

Member
Dec 17, 2013
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I ordered 2 40GB Intel 320 Series NOS SSDs today. I will probably reinstall OmniOS on them so I can add a mirror disk to the rpool. I would have them in a RAID 1 enclosure like gea suggests in his AIO guide (and connected to internal USB port) but I suspect I wouldn't be able to monitor RAID status in this case.