# Recommendations for virtualization server

## audiodef

Some of you know I run GentooStudio.org. I've been thinking of getting a new computer solely to run virtual machines for Gentoo Studio development. I looked around and found plenty of advice/info, but I value the advice of Gentoo forum users. What would you recommend in terms of CPU, amount/type of RAM, anything else you think is relevant? Even better, if you happen to know of some good deals on specific machines at whatever stores, that'd be great. I don't have a big budget - I decided to eat into a little savings fund for this - so if it's possible to find a good computer for virtualization up to a few hundred bucks, that'd be ideal. Not sure how many vm's I plan to maintain simultaneously, but I won't need to run more than two at a time. (At least, I can't think of why I would for Gentoo Studio development.)

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

Do you have a whole server to host GentooStudio.org or only a hosting package?

If you have a whole server, set up a KVM or two there.  That's very cost effective as its already running 24/7.

Before you set up remote KVMs practice locally.

I have a whole server with Hetzner.  The bare hardware is set up only to host KVMs.

It runs four or five KVMs.

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## audiodef

I have the same server situation you do. You recommend Hetzner to me. I haven't looked back since.   :Cool: 

I currently have a qemu/kvm setup on my Hetzner server, but I think I'd like to have something at home. Remote viewing access seems slower than I'm willing to put up with - but I say that as an inexperienced vm manager.

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## szatox

Launch it on your desktop first. It will let you estimate how much resources it needs, and you probably do have hardware support for virtualisation anyway.

Usually CPU is not an issue. RAM size and IO performance tend to set the limits.

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

It will support KVMs. You need kernel support.  Once you have that, libvirtd makes KVM setup easy.

Like I said, practice locally. 

This assumes that you don't mind remote KVMs for GentooStudio development work.

You could build there and run a BINHOST or otherwise move the binary packages to your local system for testing.

It keeps your piggybank intact.

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## The_Great_Sephiroth

Silly question but why not use XenServer? I love it and never did figure out how to do KVM and control machines.

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## tclover

qemu is definitely the way to go if you want to have full VM machines. It's quite easy to set up with the network manually; or you can use libvirt to setup the network for you and then set up the VMs with static MAC addresses starting with QEMU registred OUI '52:54:00:XY:UV:WZ:' et al. See /etc/qemu/qemu-vlan for general purpose automated script to set up virtual networks. if using bridged network without static MAC address, well, libirt default network setup will suffice for your needs. An automated DHPC/DNS server will be setup for you with the default virtual network.

What are you calling development here? You need to compile stuff for different architectures? Full fledged VMs are required here. Otherwise, you can pretty much use docker to setup containers quickly if that satisfy your needs. You will avoid the VM overhead and will gain in system resource efficiency, efficient time to setup the containers instead of using a full fledged VMs. And then... docker can be used a la VM way after cross compilation in prefixed environment in Gentoo and then generate the containers per ABI or architecture and then avoid the VMs overhead. Docker is as smple to setup as qemu without the hardware related details hidden behind dockerd. Et voila.

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## audiodef

I looked up docker. I think I'm going to need vm's. By "development," I don't mean application development. I mean putting together a stable stage4 tarball. I may actually need to produce variants right down to which kernel version. (rt-sources 4.8 for nvidia-drivers and rt-source 4.9/latest otherwise, etc.)

I appreciate all the input, guys. I gave it much thought and realized what I really want is a local machine to work on, and not have to depend on a network connection to work. Since I have a Lenovo H50 in one room of my recording studio, with which I'm very happy, I got another one. The A10 CPU supports virtualization, and the H50 has plenty of RAM and disk space. 

Now I'm gonna go play with my new toy and hopefully soon start spitting out stage4 images for Gentoo Studio.   :Cool: 

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

Talk to releng, they have it automated.

Idle in irc.frenode.net#gentoo-releng.  Its fairly quiet.

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## audiodef

Release engineering, nice. This will definitely be useful. Thanks, Neddy. 

PS Any news on the GF president search?

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

prometheanfire was elected as president.

He is also a trustee.

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## audiodef

Nice.   :Smile: 

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