Configuring a test box with multiple VM's

Thu Oct 9 15:16:31 MST 2014

It depends. What is the purpose of your testing? Proxmox, is a virtual
server manager, much like VMware ESXi & XenServer they simply manage and
monitor VM's.  I would use (and have used) Proxmox to manage servers in a
VLAN (just one example).  However if you are developing/configuring LAMP
servers and testing them individually for optimization (more DevOps) I
would stay with VirtualBox (or Docker assuming your bare metal Linux kernel
has LXC, kernel 3.0 or later)  and look into provisioning with Vagrant,
Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack or even BASH.  Vagrant builds the base box
and then hands it off to a provisioner.

To give you an example currently at my work we develop and maintain large
enterprise web applications on LAMP servers.  One of our systems consist of
a Blade enclosure (bare metal), OS/Hypervisor/manager is VMware ESXi,
running VM's configured in a VLAN.  On top of this we use Vagrant and
Puppet to provision, test, implement, & destroy LAMP servers as we need
them.  Because we maintain the entire LAMP config in code we can version
control all of our servers in Git plus the base box (pick your distro).
The entire versioned codebase including the base ISO's can fit on a 32GB
usb drive.  I can rebuild these LAMP servers on any environment as long as
it has enough physical memory and compute speed. regardless of the
hypervisor/vm manager.

Don't know if this helps, but just thought I'd share a perspective.

Check out:
Vagrant - https://www.vagrantup.com/

Puppet -
http://info.puppetlabs.com/download-puppet-enterprise-PPC-1.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Blu-Jae_Puppet&gclid=CjwKEAjw5NihBRCZmdLkuuTHyWYSJACtCY0JoA5k8d3FtnsJ-Lb9DOKsKGCBo2AXRRB37aqC49xN-RoCnIfw_wcB

Docker - https://www.docker.com/

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 12:43 PM, <techlists at phpcoderusa.com> wrote:

> Thanks!!
>
> On 2014-10-09 14:23, Sean Roe wrote:
>
>> Im going to have to go with JD.  Proxmox is the best opensource VM
>> solution period.
>> Sean
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 11:40 AM, JD Austin <jd at twingeckos.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Proxmox, your preferred Linux OS with Virtualbox, or using your
>>> preferred Linux OS's KVM/Qemu virtualization will all work about as
>>> well.  Proxmox gives you a nice interface to manage it all; there
>>> are some 'free' VMWare versions you can use as well.
>>>
>>> -- JD Austin
>>> Voice: 480.269.4335 [1] (480 2MY Geek)
>>> jd at twingeckos.com
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 11:12 AM, <techlists at phpcoderusa.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I provided the wrong specs here is the specs of the box I want to
>>> use
>>>
>>> i3-3220 with visualization
>>>
>>>  http://ark.intel.com/products/65693/Intel-Core-i3-3220-
>> Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz
>>
>>> [2]
>>>
>>> 8GB RAM.
>>>
>>> Thank you for your help!!
>>>
>>> Keith
>>>
>>> On 2014-10-09 13:01, techlists at phpcoderusa.com wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'd like to configure a test box for LAMP development.  What I
>>> have in
>>> mind is setting up multiple VM's on the box and loading a different
>>> distro in each VM.  Probably only need 2 or 3 VMs. The number
>>> might
>>> grow over time.  Will not be configuring X on any of the VM's -
>>> they
>>> will be LAMP servers only.
>>>
>>> I seem to recall someone saying I would need a base system on the
>>> box
>>> and then load the VM's on top of that.  Or can I use something
>>> like
>>> Mint and load the VM's on top of that?  Is there a disadvantage to
>>> doing it with Mint as the base system?
>>>
>>> The box is an i3 with visualization  -
>>>
>>>  http://ark.intel.com/products/81018/Intel-Core-i3-4030U-
>> Processor-3M-Cache-1_90-GHz
>>
>>> [3]
>>>  It has 4GB of RAM which I assume might not be enough.
>>>
>>> This box will only be used for testing so I assume each VM will
>>> only
>>> need 1GB of RAM and will probably use much less.
>>>
>>> Any direction is much appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks!!
>>>
>>> Keith
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>>
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>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] tel:480.269.4335
>> [2]
>> http://ark.intel.com/products/65693/Intel-Core-i3-3220-
>> Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz
>> [3]
>> http://ark.intel.com/products/81018/Intel-Core-i3-4030U-
>> Processor-3M-Cache-1_90-GHz
>> [4] http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>
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-- 
James

*Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-h-dugger/15/64b/74a/>*
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