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<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 10:42
AM, Raymond Wagner <span dir="ltr"><<a
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href="mailto:raymond@wagnerrp.com"
target="_blank">raymond@wagnerrp.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<div>You can run multiple servers on independent
system images running in virtual machines.<br>
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The feature set of virtualization necessarily
encompasses many of the behaviors users are
looking for, but full machine virtualization is
not a necessary, nor even a desired, aspect of
providing those behaviors.
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TL;DR; - To each their own...<br>
<br>
As Raymond points out there are several alternatives to full machine
virtualization, but for running independent system images a
hypervisor of some sort (Xen, Vmware *, KVM, Virtualbox) is
typically needed/useful.<br>
<br>
Enterprise use of virtualization is typically for the reasons listed
earlier (high availability, sandboxing etc). But also as a means to
quickly consolidate different systems where the time to sort out if
the libraries required by one application can be used with the same
kernel as other libraries required by another application by far
would outweigh the cost of wasted hardware resources. (Yes, hardware
resources are wasted for every unnecessary system image)<br>
<br>
My choice is to use virtualization (ESXi 5.0*) to allow me to run
several instances of mythtv and other servers (some (but not all)
on different kernels, distributions and mythtv versions) as well as
a few "appliances" installed as iso or packaged virtual machines
(e.g. vortexbox which auto-rips anything put in the dvd/cd-rom)
including a few non-linux (e.g. opensolaris). All in a single
physical box = high WAF.<br>
The benefits (time!) clearly outweigh the drawbacks.<br>
<br>
Drawbacks that I have encountered and anyone trying this should be
aware of include:<br>
1. If using Vmware ESXi, make sure you use 5.0 (with updates) unless
new patches to 5.1 fixes usb and pci passthrough<br>
2. Different usb-chipsets handle usb-passthrough with different
ability, I pass two usb-tuners (Nova T 500 which is a USB-hub with
two soldered USB-devices on a PCI-card) without issues but have seen
PSOD when trying 5, others have failed to have more than one...<br>
3. Raw Device Mapping (RDM) in physical mode is required to read
SMART info<br>
<br>
Virtualization is not an end to itself, it is a tool to accomplish
one or more things and for many things it may not be the *best* tool
- but the best tool may require additional resources (e.g. time).<br>
<br>
my 2c<br>
<br>
Fredrik<br>
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