Hi STH. It's my first post here so be gentle plz!
I've spent a few hours reading up on KVM this week. I've typically run ESXi and Hyper-V for my clients virtual machine servers. Typically their servers use 128-256 GB RAM installed, and run 60% utilized with 20-40 VMs. They can be directory servers, DNS, Woocoomerce sites, you name it.
Working in the SMB IT space, everyone's always pressuring us about license costs. Windows Server 2012 R2 clients are looking at 2016 and saying no thanks. ESXi starts to get costly once you've gone from 1 to many servers.
I've been reading about Xen (AWS) and KVM (Google) this week. I was first totally into Xen since AWS is huge and they're using it. The more I read about Linux virtualization, the more I'm realizing that KVM has a bigger community install base outside of AWS. And AWS doesn't really share.
I don't want to recommend KVM as an option if it's going to cause us support headaches. Saving a few hundred or thousand dollars for a client sounds great, but if I've gotta show up or fix constantly, I don't want to do it.
Is KVM stable yet? Can you get 90, 180, 365 days of uptime?
If I start with RHEL or CentOS can I move VMs to Debian later with KVM?
How's isolation and security?
Can you run Windows VMs well? Reading older posts seems to say Windows on KVM was bad. Now it's sounding better but you've gotta install drivers into the VM?
I know they're NOOBer questions but STH seems balanced where there are evangelicals everywhere else. I posted a similar question on a VMware group and I got the WHY WOULD YOU EVER CHANGE?!?!? At the same time I'm seeing all the VMware enterprise guys start ditching for AWS and clients looking to lower costs.
If my clients go to AWS I'm losing hardware and software revenue. If they go to KVM I can still sell hardware and hosting. I did the numbers and I can save them money and keep our revenue okay with KVM. We need cash flows to keep our banks happy which is why I'm scared about AWS if the customer pays directly. Profit is the same but we need to keep revenue going.
I've spent a few hours reading up on KVM this week. I've typically run ESXi and Hyper-V for my clients virtual machine servers. Typically their servers use 128-256 GB RAM installed, and run 60% utilized with 20-40 VMs. They can be directory servers, DNS, Woocoomerce sites, you name it.
Working in the SMB IT space, everyone's always pressuring us about license costs. Windows Server 2012 R2 clients are looking at 2016 and saying no thanks. ESXi starts to get costly once you've gone from 1 to many servers.
I've been reading about Xen (AWS) and KVM (Google) this week. I was first totally into Xen since AWS is huge and they're using it. The more I read about Linux virtualization, the more I'm realizing that KVM has a bigger community install base outside of AWS. And AWS doesn't really share.
I don't want to recommend KVM as an option if it's going to cause us support headaches. Saving a few hundred or thousand dollars for a client sounds great, but if I've gotta show up or fix constantly, I don't want to do it.
Is KVM stable yet? Can you get 90, 180, 365 days of uptime?
If I start with RHEL or CentOS can I move VMs to Debian later with KVM?
How's isolation and security?
Can you run Windows VMs well? Reading older posts seems to say Windows on KVM was bad. Now it's sounding better but you've gotta install drivers into the VM?
I know they're NOOBer questions but STH seems balanced where there are evangelicals everywhere else. I posted a similar question on a VMware group and I got the WHY WOULD YOU EVER CHANGE?!?!? At the same time I'm seeing all the VMware enterprise guys start ditching for AWS and clients looking to lower costs.
If my clients go to AWS I'm losing hardware and software revenue. If they go to KVM I can still sell hardware and hosting. I did the numbers and I can save them money and keep our revenue okay with KVM. We need cash flows to keep our banks happy which is why I'm scared about AWS if the customer pays directly. Profit is the same but we need to keep revenue going.