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Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.

Offline imcintyre

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #45 on: February 01, 2008, 04:08:05 PM »
Arne;

Thx for detailing your work. I am not familiar with the chips you mention. I am running a P4 1.8 with 768Meg, would you have any concerns re this. Yes I will back up first.

I also noticed that someone detailed the install instructions on the wiki. When I looked this issue before I found it less than clear.
Thx to whomever.

Ian

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #46 on: February 01, 2008, 04:30:50 PM »
RequestedDeletion and william_syd -> Thans for corrections. It's allways a good idea to keep information as accurate as possible.

imcintyre -> I would believe that your hardware can do Virtualization based on one SME 7.3 as host and SME 7.3 as guest and one Astlinux as well, because the last one is small. I guess that you can install more virtual machines as long as you do not start them all up at one time.

By the way I think the Vmware server rpm that I used and that did work with the Centos 5.1/64 and the Sempron prosessor was the newest revision of the Vmware server.

Somewhere above someone mentioned the keyword firewall.

Just some ideas - what about setting up a Centos 5.1 as a gateway and let it run it as a wireless access point as well, and then let there be a bridged SME 7.3 inside that Centos gateway. That would leave the firewalling and the management of the wireless access point to the Centos host system while all ordinary server functions is maintained with the virtual SME 7.3 Could this be a solution to the 3'rd nic problem, the wireless access point problem etc ? Just an idea. (I think that the Vmware docomentation does not support wireless networking, but I would believe that this is not a problem if the wireless networking is maintained by the underlaying Centos host system allone.)

Arne. 
« Last Edit: February 01, 2008, 04:42:53 PM by arne »
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Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #47 on: February 02, 2008, 12:21:45 AM »
Howto for virtualizing with Xen..

To be get some bether refference and to see how virtualization can be performed in different ways I decided that I liked to try out Xen as virtualization platform as well. There was a lot of howtos on the net that did not work, but there was also one that did work:

http://www.howtoforge.com/centos_5.0_xen

I'm running Centos 5.1/32 as guest operating system on host system Centos 5.1/64 and hardware Sempron 2800 / 1 Gig

First impression of Xen is that it might be more a some kind of "datacenter tool" doing things a bit "low level and effective" than really a SME environment tool. I guess that the Vmware server will be a bether "tool" for the SME server.

Exept for trying a number of howto's that did not work the one that did work, the istallation and use of Xen was quite easy. I just selected "support for virtualization" when installed Centos 64 and then followed the howto that did work.

Will try to look into how Xen relates to Linux firewalling compared to Vmware and will try to install SME73 under Xen.
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Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #48 on: February 10, 2008, 03:09:22 PM »
As this tread might develop to be a filled up with some different content (by me..), I will try to sum up a little bit.

Virtualization can be done in different ways these days, and there is a lot of oportunities. Its possible to run a SME 7.3 under a host system with Gnome, with wirtualization based on Xen or on Vmware, you can apply a wireless adapter to cannect to a wireless network, you can set up a wireless access point in the host system that is connected to your virtual SME server, etc, etc.

There is actually a lot of things that can be done, and that will work in the one way or the other.

OK, but then the very easy variant of virtualization that anyone can do without a lot of work, and that will work strightforward and easy, allmost as plug and play:

When it comes to user friendliness and flexibility the Vmware server is clearly the best alternative.

To make a simple and easy to use installation there is 3 options:

1. To set up a SME 7.3 as a server only and install Vmware according to this wiki: http://wiki.contribs.org/Vmware

2. To set it up as server-gateway and still use http://wiki.contribs.org/Vmware

3. To set up Vmware on a Centos 5.1 32 or 64 bit server according to updated prosedure beneeth.

If alternative 1 or 2 is selected it will give an aeay as possible instllation to select bridge 0 as the only way of communication and to deselect nat and private network during installation. It will also make it more easy to use the virtual installations to not use the standard location on hd but rather some easy address like /vm

4. For all variants of installation the most easy and practical way to controll the virtual installation, with also a minimum impact on the host system, is via a common Vmware console installation on a Windows machine.

Updated prosedure for installing Vmware on Centos 5.1/64, tested just now:

<Basic Centos 5.1/64 installation>
yum update
<reboot, because there will be a new kernel !!>
<If no reboot there will be a lot of problems !!>
yum install gcc
yum install kernel-devel*
yum install libXtst-devel libXrender-devel
yum install xinetd
<download vmware server rpm>
 rpm -ivh VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm
vmware-config.pl


Anouther thing.. The virtual SME installation can be backed up complete with all its datas. It is then just to copy over the backup image into the /vm position and boot it up.

The most easy and practical way to handle the Wireless access point problem is to just run a ordinary hardware access point on lan with a proper encryption system (not wep). It can also be done by implementing a wireless access point function into the host system, but this will make system more difficult to maintain etc.

Xen is until now the alternative for those who have time to make things a bit more difficult, to optain a some bether performance.

And one more thing I forgot:

If you are running the Vmware server on a AMD 64 bit dual processor and you select the Virtual SME as a two processor core installation, there will be a some kind of "overhead" that will make the host system processor to run at 15-18 % processor load at idle. (At least at my machine.) If you change the setup of the SME guest to be a "single core installation" the idle load on the processor wil drop to something like 0.2 % The Virtual SME should be sat up as a virtual single core installation.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2008, 03:55:37 PM by arne »
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