Vmware ESXi or XenServer

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levak

Member
Sep 22, 2013
49
10
8
Hello,

I'm in a process of converting my fileserver to a AIO server. My board/cpu supports IOMMU, so I will be able to pass HBA to a guest system, but I'm not sure which way to go.

Vmware ESXi is a proven thing and works and is mainly click-click and IO passthrough works like a charm. But as far as I know, vSphere is not useful any more in 6.0 and you need vCenter and web client. Is there any recent development around that?

The other option, that I currently use is a XenServer, but I'm not sure if it support io passthrough and how well it works. Is there a lot of work to be done for making it work? Is it stable?

What would you choose?

Matej
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
2,043
113
Are you stuck on those 2?

I'm considering Proxmox now myself.
 

whitey

Moderator
Jun 30, 2014
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868
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How's proxmox for vt-D device pass-thru? Easy/silky smooth few clicks like vSphere or editing file or cli option passed to VM upon LXE/KVM instance creation?
 

levak

Member
Sep 22, 2013
49
10
8
I will give Proxmox a try and evaluate. Last time I tried it I wasnt that impressed, but that was a few years ago:)

Matej
 

Markus

Member
Oct 25, 2015
78
19
8
It is a little bit more effort to pass through a pci-device - you also have to blacklist the module and enable IOMMU if not already done.

But you just need about 5 Minutes...

Regards
Markus
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,141
1,184
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DE
For me this is more a general question if you want to

1.
- virtualize below all systems
This is the approach of a barebone type-1 hypervisor like ESXi or Xen
where the Hypervisor acts more like a bios or firmware extension.
Main advantage: the hypervisor is extremely stable, tiny and every guest is equal.
Mostly you add a tiny but full featured NAS/SAN VM

2.
- virtualize within a full size operating system
This is the approach of KVM ex with Proxmox on Linux or SmartOS on Solarish
Main advantage is if you want to virtualize systems on the same OS with Zones or Containers.

Hyper-V is from history a type-1 hypervisor like Xen but from handling its more like 2. as it lacks hardware pass-through

3.
- virtualize on Top of an OS
ex Virtualbox. Main advantage is that you have your usual OS/desktop as base.
Not as fast or stable as 1. or 2.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
43
Michigan, USA
Another nice benefit of Proxmox is that it bundles both KVM and LXC into one package. So, you can do full virtualization or lightweight containers all in one consistent package.
 

levak

Member
Sep 22, 2013
49
10
8
Thanks everyone for your help. I will do some thinking and decide what i need. As far as i was thinking, i might get through with freenas+jails. That will be the easiest solution with easy maintenanace
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
3,072
973
113
NYC
Thanks everyone for your help. I will do some thinking and decide what i need. As far as i was thinking, i might get through with freenas+jails. That will be the easiest solution with easy maintenanace
I'd like to hear about what you do test and decide upon. Maybe make a thread. I'll read it.
 

levak

Member
Sep 22, 2013
49
10
8
I think I finally made my decision.

I was trying out FreeNAS for the last month and it worked out great. Jails are nice, but they are FreeBSD jails. There is no support for Linux jails anymore and virtualization is only available in FreeBSD 10 (and not sure how stable it is), so FreeNAS was not an option (I don't want to run VirtualBox with web gui).

I was thinking about keeping 2 servers (NAS and virtualization), but that was the last resort in case I really couldn't find a nice solution for AIO.

I has a look at Proxmox and SmartOS as well, since they both support ZFS, but that would still force me to run a separate VM to serve SMB/NFS/iSCSI traffic.

In the end I decided to go with OmniOS as a base OS. It will serve as SMB/NFS/iSCSI storage server (with no need to run a separate VM for that and no problems around HBA passthrough), and I can run all my other VMs in Zones or KVM. Zones will cover most of my needs and I will only need 2 or 3 VMs running in KVM.

There is a sweet napp-it GUI available for OmniOS, although I'm quite familiar with OmniOS, so I use CLI most of the time anyway. I'm still waiting for the new Intel board/CPU, since KVM on AMD is not supported, but once I get it, I will just convert current images to KVM ones and boot them. Work done:)

Matej