I run my homelab on ESXi at the moment. I'm wanting to explore another hypervisor for a while, and the ones I'm considering are Proxmox and xcp-ng (opensource Xen).
I run my homelab on ESXi at the moment. I'm wanting to explore
another hypervisor for a while
Still doing my homework, and I can always stay on ESXi if I have to
-- just looking to play with a new system to broaden my
experience......
Have you considered playing with Hyper-V as well?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019
I have ESXi on my home lab but we use Hyper-V at work and it's pretty slick, give it a go if you'd like. Hyper-V server is free, so no need
to worry about a license key.
Have you considered playing with Hyper-V as well?
tassiebob wrote to Warpslide <=-
It looks like most of my hardware would be compatible, although whether
it becomes obsolete in a future update would be a concern. That could happen with Proxmox too, although it's probably less likely.
Part of the reason I chose Proxmox over ESXi is compatibility. I run
vSphere at work, and ESXi is finicky about hardware - I had to retire
a Dell rack mount server because 7.0 wouldn't support it.
Part of the reason I chose Proxmox over ESXi is compatibility. I run vSphere at work, and ESXi is finicky about hardware - I had to retire
a Dell rack mount server because 7.0 wouldn't support it.
That is one of the main bug bears with ESXi. I have a perfectly fine
Dell 210 half length server, that's got a Xeon (I think x3470 3.9Ghz quad core), the only short comming with that server is it's
max 16Gb of ram. ESXi 5 ran fine on it, but I wasn't willing to use that in production, so it was setup with Proxmox 6.x when installed in a data centre, and was rocksolid...
I must say I've been pretty lucky to get ESXi on a lot of things (that werent on the HCL). There is a german site (escapes me at the moment)
that has a lot of "community" drivers that has been quite useful. With
that site, I have it running on an APU1D (which runs my BBS, Hub 3, my netware server, an MSDOS 622 and my Windows game server) - which only
has a serial port for a console :)
That said, I was interseted to see the discussion on xcp-ng and
proxmox. ESXi takes up too much of the 4G and I'm wondering if I can
replace it with one of those to get a little bit more ram.
I must say I've been pretty lucky to get ESXi on a lot of things (that werent on the HCL). There is a german site (escapes me at the moment)
that has a lot of "community" drivers that has been quite useful.
that site, I have it running on an APU1D (which runs my BBS, Hub 3, my netware server, an MSDOS 622 and my Windows game server) - which only
has a serial port for a console :)
That said, I was interseted to see the discussion on xcp-ng and proxmox. ESXi takes up too much of the 4G and I'm wondering if I can replace it with one of those to get a little bit more ram.
Hi Deon,
I must say I've been pretty lucky to get ESXi on a lot of things (that werent on the HCL). There is a german site (escapes me at the moment) that has a lot of "community" drivers that has been quite useful. With that site, I have it running on an APU1D (which runs my BBS, Hub 3, my netware server, an MSDOS 622 and my Windows game server) - which only has a serial port for a console :)
Yes ESXi will run on more hardware than what's on the HCL, if you want to "hack" around with it. I had to use a third party network driver for the second port on my current home server. (Intel S1200BTL, with a Xeon
E31240 @3.3Ghz) I'd still be using my old/previous home server (Now
that it's only me) running a Q9600 cpu, if it wasn't for the dropping of the cpu support and the limit of 8gb of ram....
Vmware go out of there way to remove still valid and usable cpu's etc.
But then they are aming the product at the comercial $$$ paying people. It's just lucky for the comminity that they have a free/trial version of the product.
That said, I was interseted to see the discussion on xcp-ng and proxmox. ESXi takes up too much of the 4G and I'm wondering if I can replace it with one of those to get a little bit more ram.
I have installed proxmox on the above older server (The Q9600), and it used just shy of 1gb of ram.. I think it was around the 900mb area.
Unlike ESXi though, proxmox want's to use part of the HD for the debian based install. The other thing I'm yet to try out and why my S1299BTL is still on ESXi (6.5 now), is the hardware passthrough for the sata hd controller. It's got 4 2gb hd's passed through to Nas4free, with ZFS on the drives.
\/orlon
[...]Yes ESXi will run on more hardware than what's on the HCL, if you
want to "hack" around with it. I had to use a third party network driver
I've been reading a bit of these for a while know and am wondering
what it is you can't run. I have used ESXi for a long time and most
of the time If I can do an upgrade it doesn't lose support of any of
the hardware. I think I'm currently on 6.7. I'm not at home but
The majority of my servers are on Linux, with only a few exceptions
for game servers that really need to be in windows.
I have a Dell R815. Its old but its kicking along. Been able to do anything I throw at it.
Proxmox will run a windows guest just fine.
deon wrote to vorlon <=-
I must say I've been pretty lucky to get ESXi on a lot of things (that werent on the HCL). There is a german site (escapes me at the moment)
that has a lot of "community" drivers that has been quite useful. With that site, I have it running on an APU1D (which runs my BBS, Hub 3, my netware server, an MSDOS 622 and my Windows game server) - which only
has a serial port for a console :)
That said, I was interseted to see the discussion on xcp-ng and
proxmox. ESXi takes up too much of the 4G and I'm wondering if I can replace it with one of those to get a little bit more ram.
vorlon wrote to deon <=-
Vmware go out of there way to remove still valid and usable cpu's etc.
But then they are aming the product at the comercial $$$ paying people. It's just lucky for the comminity that they have a free/trial version
of the product.
tassiebob wrote to deon <=-
Ain't nobody got time to be friggin' with the hypervisor to get it
working on a box :-) My recollection is that ESXi was quite unhappy
with my R720's, and given our IT guys at work use ProxMox I figured I'd give it a run. It just works.
Proxmox is nice, I do want to fire up xcp-ng and take a look. I wonder
if I can run xcp-ng under Proxmox to test? :)
I'm sure they'll go away after being acquired by Broadcom. In their
memo, they cited that something like 75% of their revenues come from a handful of their top customers. Reading between the lines, it sounds
like they're focusing on them and the hundreds of thousands of smaller customers are in limbo.
I'm going to be working with Nutanix boxes in a similar HC environment
for my company's remote sites. They're going to eat VMWare's market
share for lunch if VMWare loses focus on the small enterprise, which Broadcom pretty much committed to doing.
Proxmox will run a windows guest just fine.
Older hardware with ram limitations is the only reason I've changed to newer hardware. 8/16gb of ram was just not enough.
In the process I updated the host software, in doing a fresh install as I didn't want any "crud" left over. I was running ESXi 5.5 for a very long time, and it's only drawback was the requiremt of it's client management software.
I've got 8 vm's installed with 7 running 24/7 on my current server.
\/orlon
If you run into that site again, please let us know. I've got a Dell R630 that fell off the HCL with ESXi 6.7 that I'd like to find a use for.
I thought about using it (and also had a test installation on one system) for my retro systems but had to find out that is isn't
possible to mount virtual floppy disks to VMs.
While this is not a problem for most people nowerdays, it is one if
you eg. want to install Novell NetWare, where you have to boot from a floppy disk for installation - and the license files are also on floppies.
I thought about using it (and also had a test installation on one
system) for my retro systems but had to find out that is isn't
possible to mount virtual floppy disks to VMs.
While this is not a problem for most people nowerdays, it is one if
you eg. want to install Novell NetWare, where you have to boot from a
floppy disk for installation - and the license files are also on
floppies.
I could be off base here, but I mount .ISOs that I create and they are mounted as disks, right?
2twisty wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I can tell you EXACTLY how to get xcp-ng running under esxi. Since
I've never really used ProxMox, I am not sure how to control the
vswitch.
2twisty wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
So focusing on the feataures that enterprise customers want, need and
are willing to pay for is just what the shareholders need.
At my previous job, I wanted to explore xcp-ng as an alternative to
ESXi, but I got overruled and was not given the "work time" to explore
it. As a result, I have ESXi on my homelab so I could better support
the company's invrastructure. I'm now getting around to playing with
it.
2twisty wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
So, by "small enterprise," how small do you mean? The company I was working for had about 40 employees and could not justify the expense of Nutanix.
acn wrote to vorlon <=-
Just one note from me concerning Proxmox:
I thought about using it (and also had a test installation on one
system) for my retro systems but had to find out that is isn't
possible to mount virtual floppy disks to VMs.
Oh, and ESXi also features a remote console as a real program on
Linux, not only via a browser (compared to xcp-ng, which does not
offer a management or remote console application for Linux, only for Windows...)
you eg. want to install Novell NetWare, where you have to boot from a floppy disk for installation - and the license files are also on
floppies.
Oh, and ESXi also features a remote console as a real program on
Linux, not only via a browser (compared to xcp-ng, which does not
offer a management or remote console application for Linux, only for Windows...)
But then they are aming the product at the comercial $$$ paying
people. It's just lucky for the comminity that they have a
free/trial version of the product.
I'm sure they'll go away after being acquired by Broadcom. In their
memo, they cited that something like 75% of their revenues come from a handful of their top customers. Reading between the lines, it sounds
like they're focusing on them and the hundreds of thousands of smaller customers are in limbo.
Nice. I'm sure someday I'll have to actually switch. I don't plan on replacing the Server anytime soon. with mostly Linux Servers I
shouldn't have to worry either. Well see. I have 192G of ram so hope
that will last me a while.
I can't remember how many I have running 24/7 I would guess its at
least 7 or more. If we stop playing a game
Two of mine are FreeBSD based (Pfsense/Nas4free), the others are Linux.
\/orlon
That's one of Proxmox's advantages, 95% was done via a browser. Having upgraded to 6.5 of ESXi, I now have been able to ditch it's config program.
I thought about using it (and also had a test installation on one
system) for my retro systems but had to find out that is isn't
possible to mount virtual floppy disks to VMs.
I didn't realize that, just confirmed on my 7.2-5 install. You
could pass through a USB floppy to the guest if you had physical
floppies.
There appears to be a way to do it from the command line, but I
don't think you could swap the floppy disks easily, as in a multi-
disk install.
Oh, and ESXi also features a remote console as a real program on
Linux, not only via a browser (compared to xcp-ng, which does not
offer a management or remote console application for Linux, only for
Windows...)
I'd definitely consider ESXi on supported hardware. I figured that I get enough time playing with ESXi at work that I wanted a change of pace in my homelab.
you eg. want to install Novell NetWare, where you have to boot from a
floppy disk for installation - and the license files are also on
floppies.
Had a look at the proxmox setup, and yeah it lack's "floppy" image
support. How about tuning those floppies into a bootable cdrom?
Oh, and ESXi also features a remote console as a real program on
Linux, not only via a browser (compared to xcp-ng, which does not
offer a management or remote console application for Linux, only for
Windows...)
That's one of Proxmox's advantages, 95% was done via a browser.
Having upgraded to 6.5 of ESXi, I now have been able to ditch it's
config program.
Pricing for vSphere Enterprise plus and Nutanix were comparable, I thought. I should go back and compare again.
That's one of Proxmox's advantages, 95% was done via a browser.
Having upgraded to 6.5 of ESXi, I now have been able to ditch it's config program.
One of the advantages I've found with Proxmox is that it'll do some
things out of the box that (I think) you need a license for with ESXi
- live migration is one example.
I have 3 hosts and can live migrate VM's between them if I need to.
It's not as nice as it could be because I don't have shared storage on
my personal cluster, so it has to do a live migration of the discs as
well, but for what I do I can live with that.
Had a look at the proxmox setup, and yeah it lack's "floppy" image support. How about tuning those floppies into a bootable cdrom?
That might be possible, but it's just a workaround.
That's one of Proxmox's advantages, 95% was done via a browser.
I don't see the lack of a decent real remote control application as an advantage. Too often, some keys don't work correctly in browser stuff
and it's lacking behind in speed and comfort.
vorlon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I can see the free/comminity products going away. What they will then
miss is the people that have a setup at home to play around with and
test. Those skill's learned will be lost for any future employment.....
acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Maybe. But that's not worth the hassle for me.
In ESXi, it's working and even swapping disks is working fine from the remote console application.
At the moment, I'm using ESXi on an old 'Lenovo M92p tiny' and for my retrocomputing needs, it's just fine :)
2twisty wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Pricing for vSphere Enterprise plus and Nutanix were comparable, I thought. I should go back and compare again.
I think they are now. We got one of their "small business" deals
before they eliminated it.
I think it was called "Essentials." I don't remember the package name anymore, but it allowed us to use the license on 2 servers.
I can see the free/comminity products going away. What they willemployment.....
then miss is the people that have a setup at home to play around
with and test. Those skill's learned will be lost for any future
Or it'll be something like a yearly "free" subscription where you need
to continue to register to use it. No Free Lunch.
Nutanix or VMWare? VMWare Essentials Plus is a nice package, albeit like Microsoft's Small Business server - it's meant to work for small environments as a standalone cluster. We couldn't manage Essentials Plus with our existing vCenter.
If I'm not mistaken, the limits were 3 physical CPUs and 100 guests.
We're using VMWare's Remote Office/Back Office licensing, something I could see being phased out in the "new" VMWare.
At the moment, I'm using ESXi on an old 'Lenovo M92p tiny' and for my
retrocomputing needs, it's just fine :)
Those do look nice. I have 20 gb of RAM in my homelab (an old Thinkpad)
and when I need to upgrade am thinking of getting one of those Tinys and make it and my thinkpad into a cluster.
Nutanix or VMWare? VMWare Essentials Plus is a nice package, albeit like
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