Free virtualization OS

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macrules34

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Mar 18, 2016
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I was wondering if anyone knows of a free virtualization OS that would allow multi-pathing storage?


I tried ProxMox a few years ago and they didn’t support multi pathing, had the server crash and fail to boot because of this.
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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Free versions of ESXi and Hyper-V Server support MPIO.
 

MrCalvin

IT consultant, Denmark
Aug 22, 2016
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Any reasons why it wouldn't work in KVM/QEMU based hypervisors?
Is it really a hardware thing? If all the "magic" happens in the VM OS? At the very least if you pass-through two HBA's to your Win VM it should work, right?
Just curious.
 

macrules34

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Mar 18, 2016
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I didn’t do pass through because the server only had one pci-e slot.

I need to be able to do HA and be able to move VMs between servers without interruption. With ESXi you need Vcenter and that’s not free, never used hyper-v (didn’t know they had free versions).
 

vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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Keep in mind that hiper-v free is very limited. It works and you can even do HA setup but do research about it.
Also for HA you need a distributed storage between servers. It is very difficult to share local storage of the nodes. Last time I set something like that I used solarwinds storage but it is not free anymore. They used to have a community edition but I don't think they do now.
 

nabsltd

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Jan 26, 2022
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With ESXi you need Vcenter and that’s not free
VMUG has cheap licenses for vCenter, as long as it's not for business production. In other words, you can use it for your home lab as long as you aren't making money from it, even though you might consider it as "production".
 
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dswartz

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Jul 14, 2011
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I use VMUG in my home lab. 3 servers, each with a 1TB NVME drive, hosting vSAN. Excellent performance...
 

Skud

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Jan 3, 2012
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If you have the hardware and are committed then the Nutanix community edition is very compelling. I ran it in a homelab for a couple years and it was rock-stable.
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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If you have the hardware and are committed then the Nutanix community edition is very compelling. I ran it in a homelab for a couple years and it was rock-stable.
The problem with nutanix in homelab is that CVMs (controller VM) requires a good chunk of RESERVED memory on each node. My production CVMs are at 32GB each, and still, bitch about low memory. 24GB is a bare recommended minimum. It could run as low as 16GB, but they are not recommending it. My company runs 3 nutanix clusters in production, 2 in data centers, and one 3-node ROBO. All rock-stable and very easy to manage.
But Nutanix is very feature-rich, and the few limitations of the community edition are 4 node clusters, must be internet-connected, and must be running a newer version.
 

sko

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Jun 11, 2021
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smartOS might also be of interest. Supports KVM and bhyve as well as zones and LX-branded zones (KVM/bhyve VMs also run inside of zones for security).
There's also Danube Cloud if you want a pre-orchestrated solution with GUI and all bells&whistles (dns, zabbix, opnsense firewall etc) included.

Or just go with plain FreeBSD and bhyve for virtualization and jails for anything that doesn't need a full blown VM (i.e. almost anything...).
 
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