Re: [PLUG] Need Troubleshooting Advice: Disk Errors in Virtual Machines

[Art Alexion <art.alexion@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:54 AM, Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org> wrote:

On Wednesday 22 September 2010 12:51:22 am Lee Marzke wrote:
> On 09/21/2010 08:00 PM, Casey Bralla wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 September 2010 7:25:26 pm Lee Marzke wrote:
> >> On 09/21/2010 06:04 PM, Casey Bralla wrote:

You are probably correct.  However, upgrading is a very remote possibility.
These sites are donated to several family and friends.  I can't add RAM
without spending $ hundreds, which the family budget won't allow.

Still, even if I were completely overloading the server, I would expect to see
PERFORMANCE issues, not crashes.  In fact, performance seems pretty good.

In the world of VM, poor performance often presents itself in unexpected ways.

 

I may have to change the architecture as you suggested and combine several
sites on a single VM, but I was hoping to simplify (Ha!  That's working well,
isn't it?!? <grin>) my setup by giving each customer and web page/blog a
dedicated server.

We run into this problem at work a bit.  Some co-workers think they are *simplifying* things by virtualizing everything.  On smaller networks, they take a single "cheaper" server and create on it a separate VM for each server role.  Mostly, this is totally unnecessary.  What they don't think through is that instead of running those services on a single OS sharing resources, they are introducing a host layer, and multiple OS instances running concurrently on the same single piece of hardware.  Even before adding the roles to the VMs, you have a lot of overhead, so you really have to think about whether separate servers are necessary or even add anything positive.  VM technology is a great way to save money when you would definitely need separate boxes without it.  Too many people see it as a way to segregate things unnecessarily, just because they can.

I know *nothing* about apache, but if you don't need all of the VMs, ditch them.

I thought about switching to ESXi, but since BOTH VirtualBox & VMWare gave
very similar problems, there must be some other underlying cause.  Also, ESXi
seems like a $$ solution, which my CFO (Mrs Bralla) won't allow.

If I understand the curreent price structure ESXi is still free. You need a license, but you don't have to pay for it.  I defer to Lee for the definitive answer.

> I just gave a talk Monday at VMware user group on moving to ESXi [2],
> that you might find interesting.
>
>
> Lee
>
> [1] http://plone.4aero.com/Members/lmarzke/thecus
>
> [2]
> http://plone.4aero.com/Members/lmarzke/vmug_esxi/moving-to-esxi-introductio
> n/presentation_view

-- 
artAlexion
sent unsigned from webmail interface
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