"The biggest complaint I hear from VMWare people is that it is hard to manage the computer from a machine that you do not have everything set up on. And, the VMWare licenses usually end up costing a fair bit more than you anticipated."
---the flip side.....ESXi is still free. I have run and entire school district off 3-4 EXSi servers for a number of years.... I truly just don't need all the bells/whistles (and cost) of the fully licensed VMware products. ESXi 6 (latest version) runs from a web browser...no special client needed. ESXi -- free...Koha ---free.....all you have to purchase is the hardware. I have run 3 Koha VM's off ESXi for a few years now....no issues that could be attributed to a virtual infrastructure. On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 8:02 AM, Tim Young <[email protected]> wrote: > I have done a fair bit with different ones of these. > > 1) Yes > > 2) I will spend most of my time discussing this below. Skipping this > answer for the moment. > > 3) Koha works fine on virtualized servers, so long as the host machine is > powerful enough to run it. For the most part, you never realize a service > is on a virtualized server, unless your virtualization environment has > issues. > > > Choosing a virtualization environment: > > The first rule is to *use what you are familiar with*. If all your > techies are Windows people, use Hypervisor. If they are all Linux, use one > of the Linux ones KVM, Proxmox, etc. If you already have a VMWare > presence, then you can add Koha to your VMWare host. > > Containers are a linux-only thing. If you go to install them on Windows, > it creates a Linux VM under which the containers run. Containers work very > nicely if you have lots and lots of machines, or if you are really strapped > for CPU power But if you have never used containers before, the learning > curve is a lot steeper than you might think. Remember, not only do you > need to get a server running, but you need to be able to back it up. > > > If you are starting into Virtualization, the first question is what > operating systems do you know. The Linux hosting options are very nice if > you know Linux pretty well. Proxmox, for example, is a paid-for GUI that > you can use to access the free Linux KVM stuff. Linux does that all for > free, but the interface is either harder to set up, or very manual. You > can use an openstack or cloudstack, but those are very complex and awkward > to maintain if you are new at virtualization. I like Linux, and I use > Linux VMs all the time. But, more people prefer hypervisor or VMWare > because they have much nicer user interfaces. As nice as virtualization > is, you need to get something you can manage. No server is "turn it on and > forget it." All servers require backing up, upgrading, and the like. With > Virtualization, you want to be able to take snapshots and access the > machine "console" if it has an issue booting. > > Windows licenses are always a pain. I think "understanding licensing" is > the biggest complaint I hear from people who use Windows Hypervisor. And > it can get fairly expensive. > > The biggest complaint I hear from Linux people is the interface and trying > to manage the machine from a Windows platform. > > The biggest complaint I hear from VMWare people is that it is hard to > manage the computer from a machine that you do not have everything set up > on. And, the VMWare licenses usually end up costing a fair bit more than > you anticipated. > > You may notice I did not mention Oracle Virtualbox as an option. Many > people are tempted to use it since it appears to be free. It does have a > lot of features, but it does not scale well in the server world. And, you > are supposed to pay for it if you are using it for servers. It is an > awesome virtualization environment for testing and for use for yourself, > but the free setup is missing a lot of features (like, starting VMs at > boot) which you expect out of a server platform. I have never use it in a > paid-for environment; I am sure it would work well, but it is the one > platform I have not used myself. > > My 2c. > > - Tim Young > > On 9/18/2017 5:03 AM, [email protected] wrote: > >> Hi >> I have some questions about virtualization. >> >> 1. Does anyone use KOHA on virtualized servers? >> 2. What solution did you choose KVM, LXC / LDX, VMVare, ProxmoxVE or >> Docker containers? >> 3. Does it work on production servers or only on test servers? >> 4. Problems, challenges, thoughts? >> >> Tips, hints, guides welcome;) >> Przemek Kosinski >> > > _______________________________________________ > Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org > [email protected] > https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha > _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org [email protected] https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
