Great on workstations, how about servers?

The_Great_Sephiroth

I am moving my servers from Debian to something, but I am not sure what yet. Due to the way Gentoo is built from sources, I must ask, is it a bad idea to use it for a server? I normally have XenServer on hefty hardware and I virtualize many systems in Xen. Things like domain controllers, VPN servers, print and file servers, etc etc. My theory with Gentoo would be to have a virtual system on the same box as the others which would only be used for monthly updates. So I let the rest of the stuff run, then update that lone system, and somehow copy all the data to the other virtual systems on the same box. Maybe rsync? I could script that. Then I would only have to update the remaining software (such as SAMBA, PPTP server, whatever) on each inidividual virtual system.

So what say you guys? I am not in a huge rush, but I did just purchase a monster system with hardware RAID (yes, a PCI-E card with 512MB RAM, real RAID) and I intend on hosting my three World of Warcraft servers on it, so I need to decide between Slackware and Gentoo. I love Gentoo on my workstations, but I could see maintenance as an issue in the server world.
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Ever picture systemd as what runs "The Borg"?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 2:09 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

Gentoo in enterprise environments is usually managed in the way you suggest.
There is typically a build/test box that is not in production, used for building and testing packages prior to deploymenf.
Xen may or may not be a suitable test environment. How would you test kernels that need to run on real hardware.

For distribution, portage provides BINHOST, so the pckages builf and tested on the test box can be distributed much like source packages.
They are fetched/installed on the production installs with emerge -K

Theres some reading for you, BINHOST and emerge -K.

Why would you not treat Samba etc the same way?
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 6:41 pm Post subject:

XenServer is what we run our stuff in. We have two options. One physical box per system, or virtualize and turn a room full of boxes into one or two boxes with a bunch of virtual systems. We choose the latter option. That's why we use it. It would be WAY too expensive t have a box for a domain controller, a box for a file-server, a box for a VPN server, a box for a DB server, etc.

I will read up on BINHOST this weekend. Thanks very much for the information! Is there a reason you don't care for Xen?
_________________
Ever picture systemd as what runs "The Borg"?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:53 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

I did use Xen a while ago, since I used to rent a Xen slice to play with. Its not that I don't care for it. KVM came of age.
When I moved from four physical servers to one HP Microserver at home, I went with KVM rather than Xen.

I also use KVM, raid ant LVM on my real rented server.

My point about Xen was that if you need to test a Dom0 kernel, you need to do it in real hardware, not a DomU.
I am aware that Xen can suppert kernels in DomUs or the kernel in Dom0 can be used by all the guests too.
I've never tried to rum a Xen Dom0.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 4:12 am Post subject:

Would you mind sharing your setup? I have never tried using solely KVM and have no clue about how. I know how to use hypervisors like Xen, VMWare, VirtualBox, etc, but how are you doing this? Did you write your own hypervisor?
_________________
Ever picture systemd as what runs "The Borg"?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 11:22 am Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

My setup is in the link in my last post.
Oops ... I missed the l from the end of the URL. Fixed now.

-- edit --

That guide could do with an update but the basics are still correct.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

steveL · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:40 pm Post subject:

Here's a tip on using a binhost; see the post above it (bottom part) for another usage of binpkgs.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 4:22 pm Post subject:

I have not read it all yet, but I will by the end of the weekend. Thank you.
_________________
Ever picture systemd as what runs "The Borg"?