thinking of moving from esxi

[lou1z]

Hi,
i'm currently running esxi 4.1 and was thinking of moving my vm's over to proxmox.
i had a brief look at proxmox and couln't find a way to add an additional hard disk to a open vz template.
so i have the following questions if somebody would be kind enough to answer them....

1. is transfering a virtual drive from one vm to another eg centos to fedora as easy as it is in esxi? ie by disconnecting the drive, adding it onto the other vm and then adjusting fstab etc?
2. can agregated network connections (load balancing etc) be used with proxmox?
3. what sort of file system does proxmox use? eg esxi uses vmfs
4. what about usb passthrough?
5. are there any gotcha's that i should be aware of?

alot of questions i know, but i'd be very grateful if anybody who has come from an esx/esxi envoironment give me the heads up.
i think you may find a few more esxi refugees switching over after vmware's recent esxi 5 pricing structure changed dramatically.

 

[BiagioParuolo]

1) yes..but vm must be restarted.
2) From Proxmox or Vm side?
3) ProxMox use more type of filesystem. It use ext3 by default. Vms use raw, qcow2, vmdk with IDE,scsi, virtio interface

 

[lou1z]

thanks for the reply. with regards to your reply,

2. from proxmox host which would be going to a managed switch which would do the incoming load balancing
3. does that mean that a hard disk can be taken from the host eg host failure and mounted in another, much like any ext3?

cheers

 

[BiagioParuolo]

2: no. There is not any GUI manager and function out of the box. You have to install Proxmox external packages, but I think with a lot of works if any ProxMox guys have a solution.
3: yes, with some file cfg editing. But I suggest to made daily backups so it's more simple to made restore with only "qmrestore vzdump-qemu-101-2011_07_23-00_03_01.tgz 103"

 

[alain]

Hi,
i'm currently running esxi 4.1 and was thinking of moving my vm's over to proxmox.
i had a brief look at proxmox and couln't find a way to add an additional hard disk to a open vz template.
so i have the following questions if somebody would be kind enough to answer them....

1. is transfering a virtual drive from one vm to another eg centos to fedora as easy as it is in esxi? ie by disconnecting the drive, adding it onto the other vm and then adjusting fstab etc?

CentOS or Fedora use Xen (was the case up to CentOS 6) or KVM, not openvz, if you use KVM, it is the same solution, you can transfer the VM files, modulo some configuration (bridge...).

2. can agregated network connections (load balancing etc) be used with proxmox?

Proxmox is based on Debian. It is not configured by default, but you can configure it afterwhile.

3. what sort of file system does proxmox use? eg esxi uses vmfs

Proxmox uses ext3 on top of LVM, which permits LVM snapshots. With Proxmox 2.0, which will based on Debian Squeeze, you will be able to use ext4. If you want to add another storage, it is possible via web interface, or you can extend LVM storage.

4. what about usb passthrough?

Never did it, but other people did. It is possible with KVM

5. are there any gotcha's that i should be aware of?

Not one I can think of, but you should be aware that KVM and Proxmox are young solutions, not as mature as ESX, and are still evolving. Soon will appear Proxmox 2.0, which will add many instresting features (see roadmap)

alot of questions i know, but i'd be very grateful if anybody who has come from an esx/esxi envoironment give me the heads up.
i think you may find a few more esxi refugees switching over after vmware's recent esxi 5 pricing structure changed dramatically.

Yes, I read the information on free ESXi 5 being limited to 8 Go (vram), for one part.

Alain

 

[macday]

1. yes, but shutdown is required.
2. yes, but only on the host (vmware also)
3. lvm, is not the filesystem but the storage backend which is one of the main advantages
4. yes, but only usb 1.1
5. reading and testing

 

[chipitsine]

Hi,
i'm currently running esxi 4.1 and was thinking of moving my vm's over to proxmox.
i had a brief look at proxmox and couln't find a way to add an additional hard disk to a open vz template.
so i have the following questions if somebody would be kind enough to answer them....

1. is transfering a virtual drive from one vm to another eg centos to fedora as easy as it is in esxi? ie by disconnecting the drive, adding it onto the other vm and then adjusting fstab etc?

OpenVZ does not use fstab on vm. vm inherits mounts from host, however, ext3 supported better than others.

2. can agregated network connections (load balancing etc) be used with proxmox?

yes. we are using that.

3. what sort of file system does proxmox use? eg esxi uses vmfs

ext3 is supported better for OpenVZ

4. what about usb passthrough?

dont know

5. are there any gotcha's that i should be aware of?

alot of questions i know, but i'd be very grateful if anybody who has come from an esx/esxi envoironment give me the heads up.
i think you may find a few more esxi refugees switching over after vmware's recent esxi 5 pricing structure changed dramatically.

if people don't like to pay any money for esxi, they will not pay for ProxMox support as well
from many points of view those refugees are useless.

 

[lou1z]

true, but the more that use it, the more that spread the word. I know of a few companies using esxi down to the recommendation of their network admin who had played with it in their own personal time.
those companies do not use the full blown esxi due to the pricing. proxmox could be onto a winner there with what they are offering.