Hi guys.
I wanna setup couple virtual servers on ESXi 5.5 but before I dive into it I came to conclusion that it's better to ask for some tips & tricks regarding their configuration.

I was thinking to place two server that will have real purpose and additional ones for testing purposes as needed.
Bur before I continue, just as information: for hardware I will use desktop machine with 4 GB RAM, 320 GB hard and probably Core2Duo E6300 (I need to upgrade cpu since the current one don't support Intel VT). That's what I have and it will probably work for my needs... at least I hope so

I want to setup first vm as web, mail and chat server, and second one as gaming server. For both machines I will use Slackware 14.1, but I will strip it down to save some space.


Now into more details:

Web, mail and chat

Since I'm making this for me and couple of my friends so we can play online I'm not expecting heavy usage regarding traffic. Web server will be there to put some guides for installing and configuring clients for games, chat etc. Joomla or WP can be the question, although I have some experience with Joomla. If you have tips on this one feel free to answer...

Mail server won't have any real usage probably, especially because I doubt that I will have 24/7 uptime, plus storage for them. I'm setting it only for fun and to learn something. I was thinking to go with webmail SquirrelMail.

For chat ejabberd. Of course other suggestions for webmail and chat server are welcome. I have experience in setting up joomla and ejabberd, but not email.

Now, real task here is how to make these 3 services merged together with usernames and passwords? It would be cool to register yourself on website and to get mail and chat account with same username/pass. Or at least to merge mail and chat, since I know that from Pidgin you have notification for new email. Currently I have no idea how this thing work or is it possible at all, but I will explore it sometime since it's not priority. Meanwhile, if someone have some knowledge about this please share it.

Second thing is how to configure virtual disks and partitions for this server? For sure I know I will remove graphical environment and all related packages, but don't know what else since I always installed full Slack? Now, no need to struggle to save every possible MB, I just want to eliminate the most bulkiest packages. That brings questions:
1. What would be recommended size for root partition?
2. Should I create other partitions to store mail since I don't expect heavy usage (probably only for myself)?
3. Some other mount points and size for them..?
4. Creating swap or not? What could be memory usage expectations for this server? (This reminds me of esx swap partition size since there is 4 GB physical ram. But I'll get more to that later once I cover gaming server)

I also planing to run samba for lan share and to make some of those files accessible online (only for me), but I'll place them on separate virtual disk with bigger size.

I know it's not a big deal if I miss with partitions sizes since it's easier to resize them then physical ones, but I want to know some approximate calculations and recommendations for that and tips for their organization to get start with so I don't waste too much time on this later on.


Gaming server

Nothing much, for beginning Quake3 and Minecraft server. Minecraft will be memory hungry, don't know how much, but I'm not sure about disk usage and how big that can grow. For q3 I have experience.

Same rules applies for stripping down graphical enviroment and unnecessary packages (and now web related too), but still should I create separate disk/partition for game files? Other questions are same as for previous server: root size, swap or not, other mount points, etc.?


And for the end some questions about esx host configuration. Partition size, should I use recommended or...? Swap is the tricky one, don't know how much to place for it?

Hmmmm... this is it for now, can't remember anything else...

Hi,

I hope you are doing good.

Please answer the following questions to proceed further.

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1. Do you want to use VMware for creating Virtual machines?
2. Or you want to do visualization in Linux environment to implement the above?
3. Which OS you are going to use for setting up this?
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Regarding Partitions you must create following default.

1. Allocate 100 GB for root partitions
2. Allocate 8 GB for swap partition because swap should be double of RAM memory.

Regards,
Yashwanth. V

Hi Vank,

Answers are:
1. Yes
2. & 3. As I said, I will use ESXi 5.5 for host.


Since I got C2D E6300 that support Intel VT I managed to deploy ESX 5.5 today.
But I noticed HUGE difference between 3.5 and 5.5 regarding OS organization.
But that's a first glance. I'm currently exploring console access to host, then I will switch to vSphere exploration

Also, 5.5 didn't ask me anything, he did hdd partitioning without prompting for partitions size.

[FONT="Georgia"]Hi,

Please use bellow URL for configuring Squirrel Mail on the server.

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http://learn-with-mono.blogspot.in/2...-centos-6.html
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And let me know which chat clients you are looking for. Are you looking for any opensource chat clients if so please use bellow.

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http://www.tecmint.com/create-your-o...fire-in-linux/
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Let me know if you need any assistance while installing.

VANK

About log in accounts as you are planning on running multiple services (gaming and otherwise) you might want to think about centralised user management / authentication such as LDAP or Single Sign On; though any decisions made will have to be made carefully as there are security concerns to mitigate against.