What you guys wrote for snesreviews is really helpful, although any time the forum solution is to perhaps use another product, it throws off us newbies!
So let me ask my question, and see if you guys think that ProxMox would be a good fit, because it sure looks like a good one to me!
My small team supports something with a hundred or so x86 Linux servers, most of which live in different buildings and networks, and run the same core application without interacting with each other much if at all. I love the speed of Proxmox, and the fact that it is based on Etch, and the ease of getting a console connect on port 80. Here is where we are at, and where we are going. Do you think Proxmox is a fit, or would you suggest going to VMWARE or something like that?
Current Process:
------------------
Every server we do is based on Debian Etch, some hardware flavor of Intel or AMD, with VT extensions and all, very close hardware in all cases. No Windows. In addition to the base Etch, we drop another 50-100 packages on there, mainly Apache, Postgres, and Turbogears, with a few custom things thrown in. It takes perhaps a day to build up a server, and a ton of keystrokes, any one of which could go off base, so we have to be very careful with the build. We go out once a year to install a major new version of our stuff, and just to play it safe, we normally scrub the server and start clean, to avoid having to go back and revisit sites again. Then we spend the rest of the year doing mainly ssh remote support. All this eats a lot of time, and has a lot of repetition.
Desired Process:
------------------
We liked to do a fast bare metal install on each server, and then zap on 2-3 VM containers of some sort, which can have highly tweaked environments on each, and that would be cookie cutter for all 100 or so servers. Then we want to tune each server a bit, and the site specific stuff by hand. If all this takes an hour or two, that's fine, unlike snesreviews, we are not trying to get it fully automated, just much more automated than running around and doing a lot of hand Etch installs, followed by dozens of packages after that.
So, given the above, is OpenVZ the way to go? Is ProxMox as good as fit as it appears for this distributed environment? Am I walking off a cliff here?
Any ideas and opinions would be great to here.
Cheers,
- Michael
So let me ask my question, and see if you guys think that ProxMox would be a good fit, because it sure looks like a good one to me!
My small team supports something with a hundred or so x86 Linux servers, most of which live in different buildings and networks, and run the same core application without interacting with each other much if at all. I love the speed of Proxmox, and the fact that it is based on Etch, and the ease of getting a console connect on port 80. Here is where we are at, and where we are going. Do you think Proxmox is a fit, or would you suggest going to VMWARE or something like that?
Current Process:
------------------
Every server we do is based on Debian Etch, some hardware flavor of Intel or AMD, with VT extensions and all, very close hardware in all cases. No Windows. In addition to the base Etch, we drop another 50-100 packages on there, mainly Apache, Postgres, and Turbogears, with a few custom things thrown in. It takes perhaps a day to build up a server, and a ton of keystrokes, any one of which could go off base, so we have to be very careful with the build. We go out once a year to install a major new version of our stuff, and just to play it safe, we normally scrub the server and start clean, to avoid having to go back and revisit sites again. Then we spend the rest of the year doing mainly ssh remote support. All this eats a lot of time, and has a lot of repetition.
Desired Process:
------------------
We liked to do a fast bare metal install on each server, and then zap on 2-3 VM containers of some sort, which can have highly tweaked environments on each, and that would be cookie cutter for all 100 or so servers. Then we want to tune each server a bit, and the site specific stuff by hand. If all this takes an hour or two, that's fine, unlike snesreviews, we are not trying to get it fully automated, just much more automated than running around and doing a lot of hand Etch installs, followed by dozens of packages after that.
So, given the above, is OpenVZ the way to go? Is ProxMox as good as fit as it appears for this distributed environment? Am I walking off a cliff here?
Any ideas and opinions would be great to here.
Cheers,
- Michael
