Best practices? Setting up CentOS 5.5 + ESXi 4.0 -- Dell PowerEdge
 

Hello All,
I do not want to waste anyone's time but the system suggested I post to unlock all available options, so here goes. I am getting ready to setup a Centos 5.5 server with Hypervisor for a virtual server and am looking for best practices to reduce the numder of times I install.

Centos 5.5
Hypervisor ESXi 4.0.0
Dell PowerEdge 2450

I'll start looking but now my first post is in.

Thanks for any help,

have a great day,

Weazer

Hi,

not sure if i understand right. Do you want to setup a VM with CentOS on ESXi? Did you already setup ESXi?

I suggest:
- consulting VMWare's HCL
- consulting VMWare's ESXi documentation
- understand the best practices for ESXi (networking, storage etc)
- define your requirements

Setting up the CentOS VM depends on your needs. Without any information it won't be possible to help you in anyway.

mesiol,

yes VM with centos on ESXi.

power edge 2450 is not on HCL but they are the servers I have,

ESXi not setup yet,

thank you,

weazer,

2450? are you sure? Those are ANCIENT. I know for sure 2950 and higher will work with ESX, and maybe 2850 might be able to work as well (not too sure though)

HCL shows compatibility with 19xx and 2850 as you mention but skips over the 2450. They are ancient but they are what I have.

I plan to try installation I'm just in need of guidance so I do not make a mistake that requires re-installation to resolve.

Thank you for your response.

weazer

virtualization with ESX requires a CPU that has certain features your servers certainly never had - they are too old for that. So if this is all you have, you might be able to pull off something more simple and basic with containers, but not full virtualization like ESX or KVM provides.

dyasny,

Thank you, I looked farther and found that the older hardware and the newer hardware that are on the HCL have Xeon's and my 2450's have PIII.

I will look for alternatives,

If you could elaborate on the container option feel free,

Thanks again,

Weazer,

things like OpenVZ are container virtualization, just look them up. Basically, this is a much glorified jail with a lot of extra features and goodies

"extra features and goodies" and I thought Christmas had passed.

I'll look it up, thank you and happy new year,

Poweredge 2450 & VMWare
 

ESXi 3.5 loads and runs on the ancient dell servers I have and I am now on to the Centos Installation. I suppose this thread should be marked resolved as it is now an issue of figuring the rest out.

Thanks to all who have replied and I am sure I will be back, likely sooner rather than later.

BTW the Dell 2450 servers are not on the HCL for ESXi 3.5 either but it does run. Older servers i know but this could be the case with newer ones as well.

Thanks again,
weazer

without VT, performance will be horrible. You'll be running in full emulation mode, same as if you started a VM with basic qemu, without KVM

Isn't intel-VT-x and AMD-v only beneficial to windows guests? and has little effect on linux guests.

no, VT has nothing to do with the guest type.

ok thanks for the clarification.