[mythtv-users] Mythbacked on ESXi 5.0

Matt Mossholder matt at mossholder.com
Tue Oct 25 14:20:45 UTC 2011


On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com>wrote:

> As I keep saying over and over and over again, power savings are _not_ a
> feature of virtualization.  Power savings is a feature of
> consolidation.  Virtualization is for absolute isolation.  MythTV,
> MySQL, Samba, Postfix, Dovecot, Apache, Cacti, and any number of other
> applications will all live happily right next to each other on the same
> system.  In fact, since you're likely sharing the same data in Samba as
> you are using in MythTV, it in fact makes far less sense to run those in
> a virtual machine, considering one or both of them is going to have to
> access those local disks through a network share.
>
> The only thing mentioned there that would necessitate a virtual machine
> would be Windows Server.  However, that questions the need for Server
> 2k3.  It's sitting in a cupboard, so you're not using it as a desktop.
> Were you using it for development work, you likely would have upgraded
> to 2k8.  You're running Postfix/Dovecot, so it's not hosting Exchange.
> Is there no Linux alternative to whatever you're running on there?


One of the points that seems to be glossed over here is complexity. While
adding virtualization adds some level of complexity to the mix, it can also
be a tool to remove it. One reason to utilize virtualization is to remove
the interdependencies between bits of software. In my case, I find it much
simpler to run several virtual machines, with only a few pieces of
interrelated software in in each VM, rather than have one server with many
unrelated pieces of software all running together. The benefit here is that
I can make changes, knowing that the changes will most likely only impact
the software running in the VM I am working in, rather than having to worry
about breaking other unrelated software. If I need to test something, I can
clone the entire VM, change a setting or two (IPs, hostnames, etc.), test my
change, and know the whole thing works before having to commit the change to
production, which I can do my either using the new clone, or changing the
original VM. You might say that snapshots provide for reverting, but
they definitely -don't- allow me to have a completely isolated instance
running simultaneously.

It all comes down to how you want to slice and dice it. In my mind, and it
seems in several other people's minds, the added complexity of adding
virtualization is more than offset by the added simplicity (in each VM) and
isolation it provides.
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