Todd Forsberg's picture

JedMeister, I read from another post of yours that you use PVE.  I never even heard of it before but I was intrigued, so.....

I was reading about this today.  This looks very nice.  Can it be installed as a VM (for testing and learning purposes), or does it only work on real hardware?

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Jeremy Davis's picture

I have previously installed it to a VM (under VirtualBox) but it was some time ago (v1.3 from memory; currently v1.8) and I don't recall exactly how it went, must of impressed me enough though, cause I installed it! AFAIK as it relies on the CPU virtualisation extensions though so KVM may not work, or if it does it will have poor performance. I tested for about a year at home before I migrated work server to it.

I think it's a fantastic general purpose hypervisor and with the combo of OpenVZ and KVM it will happily run any OS you like. I find that VM performance is really impressive, especially Linux OS running under OVZ, but also Windows (under KVM). At work I have a Win2K3 server that I migrated from hardware, now VM running on a single CPU core with 1GB RAM allocated (PVE host machine 2.8GHz AMD X6 with 8GB DDR3 RAM) and it runs much better than it used to on hardware (2.6GHz AMD X2; 2GB DDR2 RAM).

I'd strongly suggest that you check it out!

Todd Forsberg's picture

Can PVE serve as an iSCSI target for the Vms?  I don't recall if I read that on Proxmox site or somewhere else yesterday...

-Todd Forsberg

Jeremy Davis's picture

But I not 100% sure. Its not a feature I use so best go have a read over on their website/wiki to be sure.

Todd Forsberg's picture

I am going to do it tonight!!!  I'm gonna try it as a VM first just to get a feel for it.  I have a Win2008 Server (on real hardware) at home that I would prefer to have as a VM.  If all goes well, I may install PVE on the hardware and then run my Win2K8 under that.

PS: I also read up a little on OpenVZ but what is KVM.  (to me that means "Keyboard, Video, Mouse" laugh)

I figured the title of the post would get your attention.  

Thanks for the quick response.

-Todd Forsberg

Todd Forsberg's picture

No luck as a VM....  errored out.

Can I post an image here? or should I put it on my server and link to it?

-Todd Forsberg

Todd Forsberg's picture

Here is the image snapshot of the VM install error.  I tried it under VMWare Workstation.

-Todd Forsberg

Todd Forsberg's picture

I'm bummed out.  I just tried this again on real hardware and got the very same error msg.  I'm not sure what to do to debug the problem.

Anyone know what "pcspkr" is?  Don't tell me it can't load because of a PC Speaker error.... arrrgg. 

I'm trying to load this on a 64-bit AMD 4GB RAM server.

Any ideas?

PS: This where I downloaded the ISO image from.  

http://www.proxmox.com/downloads/proxmox-ve/iso-images/87-proxmox-ve-1

Should I try a different version?

-Todd Forsberg

Todd Forsberg's picture

I can't believe all it was, was a bad ISO download.  Re-download, re-burn image and it is installing now.

-Todd Forsberg

Jeremy Davis's picture

Good luck with it all.

Todd Forsberg's picture

This looks awesome.  I have been able to create new vms, but how do I import an one of my existing vms into PVE?

-Todd Forsberg

Jeremy Davis's picture

But if they are TKL appliances, TKLBAM would make it easy to migrate them in.

It should be possible to import other virtual HDD images (into KVM) but I've never done it. I have however successfully migrated a physical machine into a virtual machine so the theory should be similar. I don't recall the exact steps, but all the info came off the PVE wiki.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Out of interest I just had a quick check and found the original ISO I installed from (1.3) but that won't boot on my desktop VBox either but I'm sure that it did originally. From memory I used my server (which was my desktop at the time) but my new desktop is a Core2Quad that for some bizzare reason doesn't have CPU virtual extensions so I think that's why it isn't working. So not sure if that's the reason why yours is  erroring out, but perhaps check that you have virtual extensions enabled (AMD should be automatic, Intel, you may have to enable it in BIOS). AFAIK VBox will hand that through to the VM (if available).

Another option (if you run out of other possibilities) would be to go buy yourself a new HDD (they're pretty cheap these days), install it in your server (WARNING: Disconnect your current HDD because PVE will format ALL HDDs it finds!), burn your ISO to CD and try and install that way.

Todd Forsberg's picture

I got plenty of spare HDDs.  Good idea.  Sounds like a good weekend project.

I always hate tearing open the server case.  Not a fear of damage or anything like that.  It is just a pain in the butt.  Virtualization is so much cleaner.

Anyway, I'll do it.

-Todd Forsberg

Jeremy Davis's picture

Yeah it's a bit of a PITA opening up the case, but in this instance I reckon it'll be well worth it!

Having a spare HDD handy will make it a breeze (other than opening the case that is). Just please make sure you disconect your current HDD(s) because as I said above PVE will format any/all HDDs it finds and even if you plan for a clean install if/when you migrate, I'm sure you're not ready to just get rid of all your files! Once you have it installed it'll be fine to reconnect it/them again.

Regardless of how you go with it, be interesting to hear, so please post back with your opinion/experience/etc.

Good luck :)

Jeremy Davis's picture

Have a read about KVM on Wikipedia or KVM home.

I have no experience with 2K8 at all but I reckon you will be happy with it. Unless you want to start again with a clean install, it is possible to migrate your physical machine across. I won't bother going into detail yet, but the basics are booting from a Linux LiveCD (that includes dd) and doing a .raw image of the HDD. PVE offers a few different HDD image options but I find that a .raw image in conjunction with the RedHat VirtIO Win drivers gives the best performance (I robbed mine from a RedHat .rpm). The downfall is that the image is static (so free space within the VM still takes up HDD space on the host) but as I have plenty of HDD space I'm happy to trade that for improved performance. Ask me if you want more info.

Todd Forsberg's picture

I have Gigs upon Gigs of space....  Actually, Tb's upon Tb's.  Space is not an issue for me.  Life is sweet.

I'm sure I'll ask for more later.  I'm good for now.  Thanks.

-Todd Forsberg

Jeremy Davis's picture

English please...

Jeremy Davis's picture

I haven't used it myself but the docs might be helpful. It refers to the previous version (v2009.x) but should still be relevant.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Let me check.

You have ProxmoxVE installed and working.

You have TKL VMs that arew working fine.

But you have a physical XP machin which you want to convert into a ProxmoxVE VM?

Is that right?

If so, then there are a few different ways to do it. Have a look here. I have used the SSH method a few times - I booted the physical machine with a Linux boot CD and dd'd an image of the HDD straight to a .raw HDD image file.

Lou Cyphre's picture

Is nmbd start still missing, in OpenVZ containers?

I have an old(?) installation that still doesn't start nmbd, so the (few!) times I restart the server I have to remember to manually start nmbd ...

[EDIT]

Well, in the meanwhile I typed the above, TKL 12 was out! I then switched very happily to the Debian based appliance, and nmbd was there ;)

Thanks again for TKL


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