RE: What's the most Accessible Linux VM Server Platform?
Hi,
Many Thanks for the great info.
I am thinking I'll run a Linux virtual machine and in that machine, I'll run several small docker containers such as Pihole, Plex, and a few other things.
I'll also want to be able to run a Windows environment with at least one virtualized domain controller, so that will be its own full virtual machine.
Do I understand correctly that there's not much of a performance hit if you run docker containers within a VM as opposed to on a bare metal host system?
Thanks,
--Al
-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Schoepplein <chris@schoeppi.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2023 10:37 AM
To: Al Puzzuoli <alpuzz@gmail.com>
Cc: debian-accessibility@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: What's the most Accessible Linux VM Server Platform?
Hi all,
On Sun, Jul 09, 2023 at 10:31:29AM -0400, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
>I currently have a VMWare ESXI host machine in my home lab. I’m
>considering alternative platforms and happy to experiment, but also
>don’t want to get part way down a rabbit hole and then realize I’m
>suddenly dealing with a bunch of hard to surmount accessibility issues.
>
>I’m also unsure about performing OS installs . is it possible to get
>audio over a VNC connection or something?
>
>The most popular solution seems to be Proxmox. However from what I can
>tell, There doesn’t seem to be an accessible Proxmox install option. I
>understand it can be installed over top of an existing Debian system
>but then you don’t get ZFS. Not sure how much that matters.
Thats not true. I am using Proxmox at work and we have installed it with ZFS on Debian. At least the data store for the VMs is on ZFS, not the root filesystem, but thats OK for us.
The Proxmox webinterface is not very useable, but all things regarding VMs and containers can be done via commandline when login to via ssh to one of your VM cluster nodes. Also everything regardin the vonfiguration of a Proxmox cluster itself can be done via commands or by editing textbased configfiles. It sometimes needs a bit more searching around to find the right commands, but I've really had no situation so far where I was not able to do my work or to perform the tasks to setup and configure VMs, configure replication, migrate VMs from one host to another, configure data stroes and so on.
We only run virtual machines with linux on our cluster, but I am very sure I will also be able to get Windows VMs up and running. I'd create such a VM localy with qemu / kvm and do the initial setup and then I'd transfer the image file of the VM to the cluster and import it into a VM.
If you need a cluster solution like Proxmox or if qemu / kvm is enough for your needs depdends on what you want. In my opinion Proxmox only makes sense when high availability is needed for the systems you need to run. If you do not need HA just using kvm / qemu is fine. And if you like to run pihole or similar applications you could use docker and run many of this kind of application on one host / vm only, that even easier.
If you tell more about what you like to achive and what are your needs and what applications you like to run on what operating systems I can tell you more about what software you can use.
In my daily job I do many things with virtual machines, linux containers or docker with or without Proxmox, on our Proxmox clusters or localy, so having more infos on your requirements can be helpfull to give better answers.
Ciao,
Schoepp
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