[kwlug-disc] Virtualization allocation?

[Paul Nijjar]

I am (foolishly) starting to think about virtualization. 

Right now I have a non-virtualized Linux server that serves up several
roles:
- Trouble ticket system
- Nagios alerts
- Cacti graphs
- Certificate generation
- Internal mail server
- Lightweight FTP repository
- ...


Naturally, this is one of those servers that started out being a
development/staging/proof-of-concept machine and grew. The trouble is
that the machine works pretty well even though it has all of these
roles. 

As I dabble my pinky-toe into virtualization, I am wondering whether it
makes much sense to split up a box that offers these 5-10 services into
5-10 distinct VMs. 

I understand that recovering from a bad hardware failure will be
problematic. I understand that (in principle, at least) splitting up
roles increases security. But I am having a hard time justifying why I
would want to take an old Pentium III that works well and turn it
into several slices of some much more powerful (and expensive!)
machine. 

I would not be splitting up this box right away even if I decided to,
but I am at the stage where I am thinking about what kind of hardware
I am going to need to support virtualized servers in production. 

Convince me?

For those of you who do Linux server virtualization: how do you split
up the load?

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org