[kwlug-disc] Virtualization technology

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 1:20 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:

> On 14-08-02 12:57 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
>
>> The VNC part is necessary only until I get SSH up.
>>
>
> Hold on ... if you're doing gui-less servers, how does vnc help, pre-ssh
> or no? There's a text mode vnc?
>

It helps if:

a. You do not know what IP address will be assigned to the new VM (did that
until I was able to control the MAC address as per earlier email), or

b. If the server does not have ssh installed (Amazon images do have it
installed, but the plain stock ISO does not, so you have to use the
console).

virt-viewer on your desktop via ssh to the specific instance on the server
(as per earlier email).


>
> > ... I also found that
> > virt-viewer is enough to view the console. ...
>
> Thanks for that. Answers the KVM /BIOS attach question. i.e. How do you
> get to the thing without a gui long enough to chew through the text mode
> install. But with that (virt-viewer), I would have thought VNC would not
> ever be needed at all.
>

Look at the virt-install manual page, under Graphics

http://linux.die.net/man/1/virt-install

You have VNC and other options. You can assign passwords to specific
instances as well.


>
>  I have VirtualBox and KVM on the same machine. ...
>>
>
> What I meant was, I would have thought these multiple vm solutions would
> get in each others way such that you can't have all of them at the same
> time. (Not that one would want to, unless learning / experimenting.)
>
> Thanks for the comment though, sounds like they will coexist peacefully.
> If not optimally.


I think libvirt supports virtualbox as one of many underlying
virtualization technologies, so in theory you can abandon using vbox
directly (vboxmanage, ...etc.) and use virsh and friends to manage
instances under vbox.

But for me, I am a minimalist, and want less components to manage, and if
something works adequately, I will use it and not worry about other
alternatives. So, if KVM does 90% of what VirtualBox did nicely, with less
idle overhead, then I will move to it.

But that is me ...

Was moving vm's between computers and looking around for some spare disk
> space instead of the hour plus per 32GB vm I was schlepping around the
> network at the time.
>
> But without a faster interface to the laptop, not sure how much benefit an
> external SSD would be over an SD card. Especially since my laptop doesn't
> have USB 3. And sata is an option everywhere else, for me.
>
> I suppose SSD's must be much faster than SD, or they'd be doing SD
> storage, not SSD storage.
>

Yeah, bandwidth for storage is the new bottleneck now. It is annoying.

Also, not sure if USB 3.0 will be a CPU hog like its predecessors or not.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
Fast Reliable Drupal
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
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