On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Timothy J Massey <tmas...@obscorp.com>wrote:
> Timothy J Massey <tmas...@obscorp.com> wrote on 01/12/2012 02:02:32 PM:
>
>
> > Les Mikesell <lesmikes...@gmail.com> wrote on 01/10/2012 02:54:12 PM:
> >
> > > If your hardware can handle a small amount of overhead
> > > and you can manage it from a windows client, you might consider
> > > VMware ESXi (the free version). Then you can run a full GUI console
> > > of any OS remotely
> >
> > That doesn't add a thing for this solution. It's not the "remotely"
> > part that I need, it's the GUI part they need.
>
There are GUI's, remote GUI's and web GUI's. VMware gives you a remote
console where you might run a GNOME desktop, etc. Depending on the
circumstances, that might be a usable GUI.
And ESXi doesn't
> > help a *BIT* in configuring an NFS share...
>
Right, but it barely hurts.
> (Nor does ESXi give me
> > any advantage in managing storage, which is all that this solution
> > really is. In fact, there's a reason you really want to run a VM
> > solution on *top* of a really good quality SAN... :) )
>
> A further point on this, seeing as "Use virtualization!" was a bit of a
> common reply:
>
> Virtualization puts *really* heavy demands on the storage layer. ESXi by
> itself (free or otherwise) provides *very* little of what you want in that
> area. It' has *basic* tools, but it really expects these things to be
> taken care of by the storage layer *below* it. (Remember who owns VMware?
> A little company called EMC, who might be able to sell you some big iron
> to help solve those issues...)
>
> And if you do try to use ESXi to do these things, you're pretty much
> locked into VMFS, unless you're on a very short list of high-end storage
> hardware (i.e. NetApp Filer). In a disaster situation, do you *really*
> want all of your backup data locked up in proprietary VMFS-formatted
> devices? I don't.
>
Don't think it really matters, but I like the remote access part - it's
like getting a bunch of free remote KVMs and the ability to map NFS-shared
iso images as DVDs. I just set up a couple of systems in remote offices
where the base system is ESXi and the hardware is 3 raid1 sets. A Centos
VM running backuppc owns one whole raid set for the backuppc archive (about
2 TB) plus part of one of the others for an nfs/samba share. Part of the
other space is for backup images of live machines that VMware's converter
tool can write directly from running machines (and works amazingly
well...). I haven't had much of this sort of trouble yet, but I think I
can swap any single disk out of that chassis, spin it up in another box
running ESXi and access the data, and at the VM filesystem level I can
remotely connect an ISO image as the CD, tell the VM bios to boot it, and
use any bootable recovery tool. All very handy stuff when the locations
are on opposite sides of the continent. And of course it was trivial to
clone the setup built in my office to the other locations.
> So, no: I do not want virtualization between my filesystem and my
> hardware in this case. On a file server: yes, yes, yes. On a backup
> server: no.
>
So far it all seems to work great, and sticking a bunch of 2TB drives in a
chassis that was being retired from some other service was a lot cheaper
than setting up a SAN. (2TB was as big as this controller would accept -
on a new box I would have used 3TB drives.)
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RSA(R) Conference 2012
Mar 27 - Feb 2
Save $400 by Jan. 27
Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net
List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
