Choosing a virtualization system?

Question

Virtualization

Hello community.
Need help choosing a virtualization system.
I understand that the question is a bit hackneyed, but there are subtleties. There is an Intel R1304

server platform for which at the office. The site says VMWare ESXi ready. And related hardware (1 CPU, 4 SATA HDD, 2 * 4Gb RAM). There is a need to virtualize at first 3-4 linux systems (mainly sites, zabbix, bitrix, others). In the future, it is possible to increase the number of systems, as well as adding windows virtual machines. Because I dealt with virtualization only in the form of games with VirtualBox, VMWare Player, VMWare Server 1, Virtual PC, and Xen in the form of paravirtualization, then I have a basic idea, but not on an enterprise scale.




Offhand picked up 3 systems: VMWare ESXi, Hyper-V Server, Xen Cloud Platform (in order of interest to them).

There was one setup with ESXi - it does not understand native (fake) raid. It is understandable, as it seems now, but it was as if I had not thought about it. The second set-up, ESXi does not understand the 2nd network card in any way ... I really liked the idea, how the client was made, how everything is configured ...

I didn’t like Hyper-V for its confusing settings, but the hardware seems to understand (I didn’t check it, but searching the Internet says that standard windows drivers are used, and there shouldn’t be any problems with them), you can throw the screws of the host system directly into the virtual machine. I also didn’t like the interface of the Hyper-V Manager snap-in, there is no monitoring of the resources used, load history (in comparison with vSphere Client). (Yes, and in general, I have suspicions that it is too heavy) ...

Xen Cloud Platform looked even less carefully. I installed it, I installed it, but I didn’t really want to figure it out. Perhaps in vain. Through the web, options are not entirely clear. In general, you need to smoke it for a long time and hard.

Dear community.
Please help me with advice on which way to go.

Several options appear:
1. Install ESXi on USB flash (by the way, the platform has a special internal connector), use each HDD as a datastore and create a virtual machine on each one.
2. The same as the first option, but install ESXi on some kind of HDD.
3. Install Hyper-V on raid 10.
4. Install Hyper-V on USB flash, push each HDD into a virtual machine.
5. Smoke Xen Cloud Platform.
6. And the last option, added just for the sake of statistics - Fight with the leadership, put Raid and do 1 or 2 option on the raid ...
7. Some other option that I did not see.)))

Thanks in advance ...

Answer 1

(fake) raid he doesn't understand

And wonderful. That still disgusting, these are your fake raids. It's better to use software than this one.
Personally, I have not seriously worked with anything other than xen (I do not like proprietary). Therefore, it is unlikely that I will make a correct comparison.
However with the same xen'om not on one XCP the world converged. You can look at something else in the spirit of Proxmox 'a. In my opinion, under your conditions quite approaches.

Answer 2

We use Proxmox. Works well. If there is no raid controller, then you need to deal with hard drives in detail.
If you want to download ready-made virtual machines, then often they are in vmvar format. To run them on KVM (the basis of proxmox), sometimes you need SUCH a file!
Vmwara is the industry standard. It is wise to buy a controller. Believe me, you don't need it to start the war. In a nutshell, the advantages of a battery-powered controller are: fast reads and writes thanks to the cache, self-diagnostics, reliable crash recovery.
PS: advice: raid10 is not recommended, on modern controllers the processors are powerful, raid6 will be pulled out without much drawdown.

Answer 3

My choice would be clear - ESXi + RAID. Yes, it's expensive, but reliability, the amount of support, the speed of work and the "correctness" of iron utilization are still the best on the market. And the platform provides opportunities, as a rule, much wider than competitors. In general, a lot of information on virtualization can be found on vmgu.ru. Your idea of ​​moving the host OS to USB is very correct. But storing virtual machines on separate screws is "tinny", the backup will torment you.
I myself am constantly looking for an alternative to ESXi, so far nothing "reasonable" can be found, as soon as you start comparing all the pros and cons, there are a lot of small details on which competitors still lose. First of all, I'm talking about the tasks of a regular office, like yours.
If we are talking about placements in the data center and tasks such as sites, etc., i.e. stupid Unix (linux) tasks, here you can already think and "pick your nose" on the topic of what to choose after all, but in the office - there are no alternatives yet.