Topic: survey-if you where or are running sme server on a virtual machine

[purvis]

i would like to take a survey on those that where or are using sme server 7.51 inside of a virtual machine
please list your processor type as close to what you think you are using and the operating system on which you are using it
also please give your performance to be good or bad in the tcp transfer are as well as over all speed.

i am seeing some big differences on what i have been doing with different computers using the same software of vmware server and i am playing some with virtualbox as well

if you are not somewhat sure of your answer, please do not post it to confuse the rest of us.

For tcp testing i am using qcheck from http://www.ixchariot.com
I downloaded the file "pelnx_710.rpm" a 32-bit rpm linux file and installed it using "yum localinstall pelnx_710.rpm"
This will create and endpoint that will run on your sme server.
The client for testing is a windows gui.  I had a problem loading qcinst3.0.exe(25,326,462 size file ) from ixchariot.com  but i had an older program named the same i downloaded years ago qcinst3.0.exe (10,041,626 file size) that worked on my windows 2000 fine.
I downloaded the qcinst3.0.exe file from http://www.daysol.com/downloads/ and compared it to my qcinst3.0.exe file that i had gotten from ixchariot.com years ago and they compared to the same file.
This is a good throughput test program for most users that can be used for all kinds of testing, i even tested some routers that had bad throughput and i had to remove them from production.

As far a speed test in other areas other than tcp transfers i will have to get back to you if i find some programs to test disk and processor, but i am mostly interested in network transfer.

I had a hard time installing sme server 7.51 in a virtual machine using VMware server, but i did find some setting that where i made changes made the difference in me going crazy or not.
i will post them and i would like to put up pictures as well.

[tomsmsp]

Qcheck tool. Check.   The tests I'm doing around best practice V-networking and security shows that with a mixed environment some tweaks are definitely required to get close to reg. networking speed.  Two tips is disabling TCP offloading on vista/7 systems. That makes a big difference in a ms network.  Don't know about linux yet.  Proxmox/vbox claims that virtio drivers in the disk and network subsystems gives near non-virt speeds because of block mode transfers. Great subject...on my testing list.

[Oosterheert]

I've tested a few setups with SME 8beta6 as a KVM guest on Proxmox 1.7
Worked very well as in I didn't notice a difference between this virtualisation setup or real hardware...

That said, i didn't test network speed as my test was setting up a PDC with LDAP on a different location as my Win XP computer over a IPSEC vpn tunnel. Speeds weren't great anyway because of the adsl connection in between . (it did work well though and how much speed do you need for samba)

Used Virtio for network and disks

[fpausp]

I use Proxmox since nov2010 on a fujitsu tx100 with 8GB RAM for small networks. VM´s are sme7, sme8 and debian permanent and ubuntu, xp, win7 for testing... works great. The VM´s have not timing-problem and performance with kvm is good.

[purvis]

Oosterheert
DSL
I was on dsl as of last year till about October 2010. I have now move all my wan connections(about to cable internet and i could not be happier and
it is saving me a bundle of hard earned cash.

I have some apple mac computers and i made some changes to the receive window and a few other parameters on the ethernet hardware connection.
As far as i can tell, the performances have improved.
I will be posting some information on that subject in the near future.

[mdo]

I use Proxmox since nov2010 on a fujitsu tx100 with 8GB RAM for small networks. VM´s are sme7, sme8 and debian permanent and ubuntu, xp, win7 for testing... works great. The VM´s have not timing-problem and performance with kvm is good.

Same (excellent) results here with Proxmox VE. No performance issues at all. Great (Open Source) server virtualisation software. Highly recommended. Thanks to the developers in Vienna and a well functioning community around the product.
http://proxmox.com/products/proxmox-ve

[purvis]

Thanks mdo for the extra recommendation on Proxmox. It gave me "THE" incentive to try it.

I am testing Proxmox and so far i really like it.
A very clean user interface that works fast and well.
 

The only problem i have so far is when using VNC provided by the Proxmox HOST, the CPU does take a bigger hit than standalone VIC.

[purvis]

mdo and fpausp
any pointers on settings for running SME server on Proxmox VE such as what type virtual hard drives and ethernet settings, etc.
and whether to run in the OpenVZ or Fully virtualized (KVM)
or even some suggestions or problem areas
Possibly for testing or production where SME is to providing lower demand use of some the SME services, i would have to possibly recommend this Virtualization Software already to anybody.

thanks in advance.

[larieu]

I also use Proxmox - mainly for test prior to introduce into main servers, or to try different approach to something
also I use one of sme virtualized installs as "semitest" - is somehow for backup purpose and implement changes only after I try them on a "fresh install"

during time lot's of hardware was used on that place (starting with some Intel MB with 8xx cipset) ... now I have "spent" some money to have an Intel MB DX58S02 with an i7 cpu + 3 x DDR3 memory + 1 huge HDD - while I have at least one semipermanent install and I try various scenarios
semipermanent - because if I need to stop and try something else this is the hardware ,  I even copied on other media appropriate files generated in back by proxmox,
then I have used the same hdd for some other test
at the end just reinstalled proxmox on the same hdd and rebuild my virtual machine from backup-ed files

never noticed something spookie but I never used in "full load" also
while this is hardwired into my network but the rest is wireless - network speed is not an issue for me (my bottleneck is on wireless link - always)
On some old hardware (which just accepted "hardware" virtualization) I have noticed some "slowness" if started simultaneous virtual machines (I remember once at least one sme + one fedora + one XP+ one Win7 all working together on the old hardware - this was slow)

[purvis]

Larieu, have tried to produce audio with any of your proxmox vms?

i saw this
http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/4051-About-sound-in-proxmox
so playing around last night i did
apt-get install alsa
then
alsaconf

[larieu]

purvis

frankly... no

while the main OS is proxmox and sme is virtualised there and is intended as server I didn't consider to install audio drivers
or to mess around this

[purpaboo]

7.5.1 on qemu-kvm on a centos 5.6 host.

Dual Quad core procs (X5355), 8GB RAM, NFS mounted filesystem.

The host is also running:

DragonflyBSD (for class)
FreeBSD (for class)
OpenBSD (for class)
NetBSD (for class)
Centos6 (testing, ldap server)
Centos6 (testing, samba PDC)
Windows XP (meh)
Centos 4.4 (license server)
Centos 4.8 (license server)
Centos 5.4 (license server)
Windows 8 (testing)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (database server)
SME Server 8.0beta6 (ftp server)

I tried proxmox at home on one of those HP Microservers. It ran nicely but the interface was a bit fugly!

I'm not sure if I'd use it in production - there were some issues with the clock on *BSD VMs.

[purpaboo]

Just a note to those who follow this sort of thing ...

I was suffering a kernel crash on install for a smeserver 7.5.1 running on qemu-kvm on a HP Microserver running Centos6.

Solution: add the flag "-cpu host" to the qemu-kvm launch command.

[purvis]

proxmox is updating their software from version 1.? to version 2.? and the beta 2.0 is on their website.
it mentions beta installer, i think they mean 2.0 is the beta
i have not loaded it but i thought i had seen where they had worked on their user interface.
i have tried below version 2.0 and i like it more than others solutions when for testing.
they have a vnc now with version 2.0.
i would think their stuff should be rocking at the end of march 2012 with version 2.