Hi good people. Not so skilled virtualization administrator needs your help. Our firm prepares to deploy new dedicated virtualization server and we want to use proxmox 3 with basic support plan to rule them.
The hardware will be:
CPU Dual Intel Xeon E5 6 cores each
64GB RAM
hardware RAID 10 - 4 x SAS Seagate Cheetah 15k 600Gb (primary virtual machines storage)
hardware RAID 10 - 4 x SATA WD Black 7200 2Tb (slow and test virtual machines storage/backup storage for SAS virtual machines)
1 WAN interface
I'm planning to install proxmox 3.1, make NAT bridge and hide virtual machines behind it, because hoster can get me only one gigabit Ethernet adapter with only 3 public IP addresses. All access to the virtual machines will be through internet.
Question 1. What is the best way to use disk arrays - where to install proxmox on SATA or SAS array, how to connect second array to proxmox - LVM, directory or what is the best choise? (on older versions I have used directory on LVM connected as second proxmox storage).
Question 2. We need 4 Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines - 1 terminal server, 1 web server IIS, 1 MS SQL server, 1 server for custom software to use with MS SQL. Also we need 3 Linux virtual machines - 1 mail server Zimbra, 1 HelpDesk, 1 jabber server. So the question is what type of virtual disks to use on this systems - I think qcow2 will be the best choice for all except Windows Server 2008 R2 with MS SQL - there must be raw format.
Question 3. Before this setup, for lab use I have installed proxmox 1.9 and used it for testing software and configuration. We are using VMware ESXi 4 on our server, but in VMware ESXi 5 RAM limit per server/host is 32GB. We need another free platform. But when I tried proxmox 3.0 I saw there are some differences with default CPU type for virtual machine (compared to 1.9 platform). I saw on our Intel Xeon E3 some slight lesser performance using proxmox 3 compared to proxmox 1.9. Do I need to use new type of cpu or old qemu will be sufficient for new machines with sandy bridge cores?
P.S. maybe proxmox developers will write good book for administrators about using proxmox (with some tricks and tips, also good techniques - like FreeBSD or debian handbook). It will be very good - I will buy it. Can pay 30 euro for electronic version. I think a lot of people can buy such book to support project. Of course there is Red Hat documentation about KVM, another info about openvz, but there are no information about standard deployment of different platforms inside KVM to get best performance for example with MS SQL (i read here on forum that raw is the best choice for MS SQL, but in proxmox 3.1 are significant improvements with using qcow2). Or maybe someone can propose good book about KVM and OpenVZ virtualization? And why there is no online courses from proxmox - only local? It will be very good to have choice, because I can't travel to Germany for courses - it will be too expensive for me.
Thx for help and good luck.
The hardware will be:
CPU Dual Intel Xeon E5 6 cores each
64GB RAM
hardware RAID 10 - 4 x SAS Seagate Cheetah 15k 600Gb (primary virtual machines storage)
hardware RAID 10 - 4 x SATA WD Black 7200 2Tb (slow and test virtual machines storage/backup storage for SAS virtual machines)
1 WAN interface
I'm planning to install proxmox 3.1, make NAT bridge and hide virtual machines behind it, because hoster can get me only one gigabit Ethernet adapter with only 3 public IP addresses. All access to the virtual machines will be through internet.
Question 1. What is the best way to use disk arrays - where to install proxmox on SATA or SAS array, how to connect second array to proxmox - LVM, directory or what is the best choise? (on older versions I have used directory on LVM connected as second proxmox storage).
Question 2. We need 4 Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines - 1 terminal server, 1 web server IIS, 1 MS SQL server, 1 server for custom software to use with MS SQL. Also we need 3 Linux virtual machines - 1 mail server Zimbra, 1 HelpDesk, 1 jabber server. So the question is what type of virtual disks to use on this systems - I think qcow2 will be the best choice for all except Windows Server 2008 R2 with MS SQL - there must be raw format.
Question 3. Before this setup, for lab use I have installed proxmox 1.9 and used it for testing software and configuration. We are using VMware ESXi 4 on our server, but in VMware ESXi 5 RAM limit per server/host is 32GB. We need another free platform. But when I tried proxmox 3.0 I saw there are some differences with default CPU type for virtual machine (compared to 1.9 platform). I saw on our Intel Xeon E3 some slight lesser performance using proxmox 3 compared to proxmox 1.9. Do I need to use new type of cpu or old qemu will be sufficient for new machines with sandy bridge cores?
P.S. maybe proxmox developers will write good book for administrators about using proxmox (with some tricks and tips, also good techniques - like FreeBSD or debian handbook). It will be very good - I will buy it. Can pay 30 euro for electronic version. I think a lot of people can buy such book to support project. Of course there is Red Hat documentation about KVM, another info about openvz, but there are no information about standard deployment of different platforms inside KVM to get best performance for example with MS SQL (i read here on forum that raw is the best choice for MS SQL, but in proxmox 3.1 are significant improvements with using qcow2). Or maybe someone can propose good book about KVM and OpenVZ virtualization? And why there is no online courses from proxmox - only local? It will be very good to have choice, because I can't travel to Germany for courses - it will be too expensive for me.
Thx for help and good luck.
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