LinuxQuestions.org - Home Server Planning

Hello everyone,

I am doing some pondering on how I would like to set up a home server environment.

I am currently planning on using KVM on CentOS 6.4 to host the network's services. My thinking behind placing services on VMs is to avoid the kludge that my old home server has mutated into over the years. I am currently experimenting with KVM due to it being supported by Red Hat and the troubles I have had in the past trying to get live migration working on Xen (in the off-chance such a measure were to be wanted for home use).

The VMs would be stored on a ZFS array managed by the host using ZFS on Linux, in order to avoid having to buy separate hardware for a FreeBSD box just for storage. I would likely push my snapshots to a separate machine placed in as far away a corner as possible. I don't think off-site would be viable for me cost-wise.

I am still testing pieces of this setup in virtual machines, and am holding off on the hardware until I can get the test versions to be more functional.

Does this overall setup idea raise any immediate red flags? Has anyone had any major performance problems with either ZoL or KVM?

Thanks

Edit - Did a live migration with KVM successfully with my sandbox machines. Other than a few silly mistakes, it was fairly easy to push from the source to the destination. This was a welcome change from the difficulties I was having with Xen. However, at the time of my original post I had forgotten about the fact that the virtual disks must be accessible by the source and destination at the same place on the file system on both machines. This would mean a separate server, or simply not being able to fully move a machine, disks and all, from place to place without downtime (not critical in a home environment, of course).

Re-Edit: KVM migration wasn't quite as seamless as it seemed at first, though I think most of the problems were just a case of being a wee bit too gleeful about tossing my test VM around. But that is a whole thread on its own.