Hypervisor Choice

[T_Minus]

I need a hypervisor with the following requirements:
- 4 CPU Capable
- Won't break the bank with 4 CPUs (read: free or <2k$/year no suport)
- 99% will run linux of some sort other 1% unknown
- API for provisioning / rolling out and managing guest OS


Maybe XEN? Or maybe FreeBSD + JAILS + DOCKER when that works a bit better?

I'm really new to managing my own host / hypervisor so maybe I'm over looking something

Advice, input, etc, would be welcome.

I'd eliminate my 2, 28C ESXI hosts for one of these but the stupid VMUG won't let me combine them into one big server (cpu)

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Is rolling your own KVM host an option? I've not used it myself on anything as big as a 4P box but I've got a couple of debian boxes happily running VMs at work. Licensing and support costs obv. not an issue and if the majority of your boxes are already running linux then that makes things even easier.

 

[Keljian]

Proxmox VE would be my choice if esxi wasn't an option

 

[T_Minus]

Proxmox VE would be my choice if esxi wasn't an option

Thanks! Checking this out

 

[Rhinox]

Proxmox VE would be my choice if esxi wasn't an option

Proxmox VE is *not* hypervisor. It is just something like management interface for other virtualization technology: OpenVZ and KVM.

 

[Martin Jørgensen]

Huh?
What about Ovirt og XenServer then? they are also a management layer for KVM/Xen

 

[T_Minus]

Proxmox VE + OpenVZ or KVM look interesting.

IIRC linode is migrating to KVM

 

[smithse79]

Hyper-V Server 2012? It's free and runs most flavors of Linux.

 

[RTM]

Proxmox VE + OpenVZ or KVM look interesting.

IIRC linode is migrating to KVM

Before you migrate to Proxmox VE, and start using OpenVZ you might want to look at the Proxmox VE 4.0 beta, they have replaced OpenVZ with LXC (which is also pretty cool).

There are far too many options to chose from as far as hypervisor and management tech goes, another option is to use ganeti, it is developed by Google and supports both KVM and Xen virtualization.

Another interesting project is LXD, which makes it really simple to manage LXC containers.

 

[dswartz]

One caveat with ganeti: unless this has changed in the last year or so, it does NOT come with a GUI. I found a project supposedly working on that, but at the time, I couldn't even get it to build, so I gave up. Maybe this is not a concern for you (I prefer a GUI, so...)

 

[gigatexal]

Hyper-V Server 2012? It's free and runs most flavors of Linux.

you gotta learn powershell for it right, no GUI? if so, no. because powershell sucks

 

[TuxDude]

you gotta learn powershell for it right, no GUI? if so, no. because powershell sucks

I'm probably one of the most anti-MS people around here, and yet even I think powershell is a good thing.

As to HyperV - imho it is shit like most everything else MS makes, but it is designed to be remotely managed whether it is running on a fully-licensed windows datacenter edition, or the free hyperv-server edition. You should be running the hyperv management tools (GUI) from your desktop not from the server - if you do have a full server install on the host it should be core edition (or nano-server or whatever) and you should still leave the GUI bits on your desktop.