[kwlug-disc] Virtualization technology

[Jonathan Poole]

Maybe off topic, however...Not really the Virtualization technology, but a way to use guest OS’s the same between them….(Vmware, Xen, Ec2, DigitalOcean, rackspace, w/e)

My setup consists of usually the following:

MacBook Pro: virtualbox + vagrant + packer.

Packer to build a vagrant box (virtual box image) usualy running chef-solo, but any provisioner will work (same folks who develop vagrant, develop packer)
Import locally (.box)

Import into vagrant and..:

Iterate on provisioning - more sophisticated provisioning usually with chef-server, heavier lifting with recipes, code, deployments, or capistrano tasks.
 
Develop scripts/configure vm locally usually using different provisioning methods (salt, ansible, chef, puppet, shell) primarily chef, with berkshelf.

Once it’s ready for others to use, or pushing into production…

Packer build AMI or whatever cloud based box format

Run chef/provisioning, which should be predictable as it’s been done locally with a very similar system.

Done.

This allows me to keep costs down by not having long running AWS instances, or other cloud instances running while I develop myself out of the wet paper bag I put myself in, and I can work anywhere (once a .box is imported into vagrant, I can do all kinds of local development without the need of uploading,).  This then gives me a predictable way of building machines in the cloud, locally, usually on any platform.

Other pros: 

1. I’m committing recipes, scripts, etc that have been tested, before pushing/publishing
2. Never have to deal with the ‘throwing it over the fence’ scenarios from development/operations
3. If your computer can handle it, clusters are not out of the question within a vagrant environment.
4. A proper dev, test, stage, prod workflow.

./jp
$0.02.

On Jul 29, 2014, at 6:02 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:

> Thanks to all who replied.
> 
> Seems that libvirt (which has virsh in it) is the way to go and be VM
> technology independent (of sorts).
> 
> Now, for another aspect of all this ...
> 
> When I used VPSs, they have always been Xen based (SliceHost,
> RackSpace Cloud, Linode, Amazon AWS), and performance is good.
> 
> But for the past few years I have been hearing that KVM is the way to
> go, and it is better than Xen, ...etc.
> 
> Why are people saying that?
> Is it overhype?
> If it is true then why are the above big companies staying with Xen
> and not moving to KVM?
> Is it just inertia and sunk cost?
> 
> -- 
> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
> 2bits.com, Inc.
> Fast Reliable Drupal
> Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
> 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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