[mythtv-users] Mythbacked on ESXi 5.0

Jay Ashworth jra at baylink.com
Mon Oct 24 20:55:56 UTC 2011


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Raymond Wagner" <raymond at wagnerrp.com>

> > People running separate file storage, router/firewall applications
> > can have them all on the same hardware.
> >
> > m0n0wall, Vyatta, pfSense, FreeNAS, openfiler, etc. will all run
> > very happily in a virtualised environment.
> 
> But the question is _why_ would you want to? One has to seriously
> question the sanity of the person who uses virtual machines so they
> can run half a dozen border firewalls on the same machine.

C'mon, Ray.  He never suggested anyone would want to do that.

> You completely misunderstand the entire purpose for virtual machines to
> exist. Modern operating systems have this wondrous technique called
> preemptive multitasking, that allows them to run multiple applications
> on the same image just fine. You don't need to employ a virtual
> machine to achieve that. You don't even need a virtual machine to provide
> isolation between applications for convenience and manageability. A
> simple chroot provides most of the benefits as a VM in that regards,
> and para-virtualization techniques such as jails, containers, and vservers
> can pick up much of the rest, like isolated memory space, dedicated
> network stack, and cpu/memory quotas.

You've clearly never dealt with apps like WebGUI, Zimbra, Openfiler,
and the like, which all *desperately* want their own entire machine,
for administrative reasons.

Certainly, if you're motivated enough, you *can* get those things all
to play well together, but *how much do you bill an hour*.  I sure charge
enough that I don't want to spend it on non-revenue activities like 
that for myself, when there's a much more time-effective solution.

> So where does this get you with MythTV? The home user isn't doing
> anything that is going to be bothered too much by the occasional
> crash.

I tend to think that anyone sufficiently inclined to use Myth at all
is a more... motivated viewer than average.

> The home user isn't going to have hot spare systems to fail over to in
> the event of a hardware failure (and the free ESXi doesn't allow such
> anyway). With all its runtime information stored in the database,
> MythTV is already fairly close to the "elegant solution". Change the
> IP address of the master backend, and with a few keystrokes, a slave
> backend gets promoted to master and you can start back up.

This much is true.

> There is a time and place to run VM software, but like Govindarajan, I
> don't see a home user running MythTV to be one of them. If you find it
> fun and amusing, or even just good practice for a career, have at it.

Which is a suitable reason, certainly.  As is "I have all this knowledge
anyway, and I might as well use it here.

> I just don't see how it can make management and operation an easier
> task.

Economy of scale is one other reason you didn't mention...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274


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