Lab Environment -- configuration help needed

[saschas]

Hi,

I have setup proxmox on a new school server in a lab-environment to provide some "playground" for our teachers.
So it is more important to have the possibility to choose from a couple of dozen OSs, depending on which one they need in their classroom.

I could need some help / hints / links on how the "perfect" setup and configuration for this env would be.

I have a phenom x4 64bit on a gigabyte mainboard with 2 SATA 500 GB Harddrives (no RAID) and 8 GB RAM, 5 NICs

Questions:
1) how should I integrate the second harddrive?? LVM or as some sort of Directory and how do I do the Directorything on a local drive the best way?? A FreeNAS will be provided on another machine.
2) NICs ?? Better venet or each NIC as a bridge??

thanks in advance,

Sascha

 

[tom]

Hi,

I have setup proxmox on a new school server in a lab-environment to provide some "playground" for our teachers.
So it is more important to have the possibility to choose from a couple of dozen OSs, depending on which one they need in their classroom.

I could need some help / hints / links on how the "perfect" setup and configuration for this env would be.

I have a phenom x4 64bit on a gigabyte mainboard with 2 SATA 500 GB Harddrives (no RAID) and 8 GB RAM, 5 NICs

Questions:
1) how should I integrate the second harddrive?? LVM or as some sort of Directory and how do I do the Directorything on a local drive the best way?? A FreeNAS will be provided on another machine.

I would use LVM on the second harddrive, see:

http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage_Model#Use_local_devices_.28like_.2Fdev.2Fsd...2F.2C_FC.29

but this is only usefull for KVM guests. so it depends on what you wanna run - OpenVZ or KVM?

if you have freenas, you can run NFS sever on this box to provide NFS backup space and NFS ISO store (optional)

You can also think of storing disk image there, but I would use the local drives here.

 

[saschas]

Thanks for that quick answer.
In fact we want to use both openvz for gnu/linuxes and kvm for Opensolaris ans $MS-Servers.
We want our students to play with different OSs

Should I add the 2ne hdd to a new volumegroup or better to volumegroup "pve"

+ I tried the storage model like described in the link, but it always creates a disk that already is 99% used ??

 

[udo]

Thanks for that quick answer.
In fact we want to use both openvz for gnu/linuxes and kvm for Opensolaris ans $MS-Servers.
We want our students to play with different OSs

Should I add the 2ne hdd to a new volumegroup or better to volumegroup "pve"

+ I tried the storage model like described in the link, but it always creates a disk that already is 99% used ??

Hi,
I think you can't know exactly how much space you need for kvm and/or openvz, so the simples solution is to expand pve with the second disk. Than you can grow the locical volume data.

Udo

 

[saschas]

So this would mean:

1) # fdisk /dev/sdb
2) # mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
3) # pvcreate /dev/sdb1
4) # vgextend pve /dev/sdb1
5) # lvextend ????

or should I simply step 1 and 2 and then create a directory and mount sdb1 into this directory??

greetings from belgium, sascha

 

[udo]

So this would mean:

1) # fdisk /dev/sdb
2) # mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
3) # pvcreate /dev/sdb1
4) # vgextend pve /dev/sdb1
5) # lvextend ????

or should I simply step 1 and 2 and then create a directory and mount sdb1 into this directory??

greetings from belgium, sascha

Hi Sascha,
point 2 is useless - your filesystem will be destroyed from the lvm!
you don't need a partitiontable on sdb, but you can use one to remember that the partition is a lvm-partition (type 8e).
Point 5: look with "vgdisplay pve" how many free space you have. Then extend data e.g. with

lvextend -L +400G /dev/pve/data

Attention! leave min. 4GB free in the volumegroup pve for backup (snapshot).
After that use resize2fs to enlarge /var/lib/vz.

Udo

 

[saschas]

Nice, Thanks

# resize2fs /var/lib/vz does not work
# resize2fs /dev/pve/data does

o.k., now big step 2:
adding directories for ISO and VZDump, if I understood it right, on my setup,
I should mkdir 2 new folders within /dev/pve/data of on an external NAS

Step3 still gives me a headacke:
5 NICs , in total
3 nics in one subnet
2 in another subnet
hm, will play with that tomorrow

Sascha