VM Server:
Ubuntu Server 12 with KVM installed. 2 Opteron quad cores.

Intended management server:
Intel dual core with hyperthreading, 4gb ram. Linux Mint.

I want a fairly straight-forward installation, only one piece of mgmt hardware. Only one vm server. I want a web interface for the manager.

I have installed and run Vmware, Oracle VM (not virtualbox, but the server one), and Windows Hyper-V.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

So why not stick with those? Do you explicitly want to use KVM? In that case, use Xen.

Alex Brinister

If you want to change the topic, please start a new thread.

@ jetcollins How does my response start a new topic? The OP wants a KVM manager. Xen is a KVM manager of sorts.

@ OP QEMU is another VM manager utilizing KVM

Alex Brinister

no, it is a different hypervisor, and is offtopic here.


Use virt-manager if web interface is not an absolute must. It can be accessed remotely over ssh -X

Oh ok. I apologize. I assumed that he was talking about a VM solution that uses KVM.

Alex Brinister

Xen and KVM are competing projects. I think you were assuming I meant "virtualization" in general by the term KVM.

At any rate, I just set up WebVirtMgr. It is a hosted website through which you can manage your KVM. Screenshot below.

Basically I chose kvm because I wanted software RAID. Didn't want to shell out for a raid card. Vmware and Oracle VM don't have software raid. Didn't want to pay for Windows Server. So I just installed ubuntu server and chose to only install OpenSSH Server and Virtualization Server packages.

WebVirtMgr is pretty cool. You can see what it does on the screen shot. All you have to do after you Ubuntu install is change a few options in two files and add a user. The whole WebVirtMgr website consists of 1 page of those instructions, then the login to add your server and manage it. In fact it took me a few days to realize it was a hosted service. I thought it was a web package you installed on the server.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the heads-up. Now I understand why there are options for KVM and Xen in the kernel configuration!

Alex Brinister

WebVirtMgr? I would keep very far away from such a project. Some company in Ukraine having my server's address, usernames and passwords is not something I'd consider in a lifetime.

Not a bad point. I'm going to switch to Convirt anyway.

I would recommend oVirt or RHEV, but I am of course biased

how is ovirt superior to convirt?

I haven't used convirt, but according to the data on the website, the featureset is poorer than oVirt's - no HA and load balancing, no self provision portals, SPICE is not in use, no specialized distribution for hypervisors. I could probably go on, but really, the choice is yours - this is the beauty of opensource.

Thanks very much for the info. I'll take a good look at oVirt, and report my progress.