Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Pepe <pepe@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:48:49 +0200
Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On 26 Jun, 01:01, Bill Campbell <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On 25 Jun, 08:48, "Steve M. Fabac, Jr." <smfa...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I have not touched VMWare and don't know where to
start to investigate this issue. So I thought I'd
post it here where several users have implemented various
systems for their own use or client's to solicit recommendations
on suitable system configurations to replace the client's
current servers.
The client running SCO 5.0.5 Enterprise on two
servers, one is the live production and the other is
a "hot spare."
Gack. Can you get the clients upgraded to 5.0.7? There are real
problems installing older versions of OpenServer under VMware, due to
issues with older drivres for the emulated BusLogic SCSI controller.
Bela and others have recommended using IDE emulation rather than SCI on
VMWare server or workstation for OpenServer installations.
VMware ESX does not support IDE emulation, only SCSI. I don't like
VMware ESX, I think it's an excuse to sell a lot of expensive,
specialized hardware and software that's unnecessary for small
installations. Don't get me started on that excuse for a Windows GUI
they use to manage it.
VMware ESX provides High-Availability (with the proper license option) so Steve could solve the problem he has wanting to have a machine as a "hot spare": build a two-node ESX Virtual Infrastructure, and put its shared storage on some iSCSI (cheap) place (that would be a third server with the disks and with a software iSCSI target daemon, instead of buying and expensive SAN solution). But ESX is expensive for small shops.
Another solution would be to build two independent "VMware Server for Linux" machines (free as beer, except for the hardware) (server A and server B). Then Steve could put the production OpenServer 5.0.5 into a virtual machine in server A (no need to buy new upgraded Openserver licenses to support newer hardware), and replicate the virtual machine virtual disk's files to the server B "VMware Server" installation. That replication could be done: (a) stopping the Openserver virtual machine at night, and copying the files via ethernet from server A to NFS in server B, and then restarting the virtual machine (I think "VMware Server" is scriptable via perl, anyone?); or (b) alternatively, using a real-time open-file aware solution like Double-Take for Linux, which is able to replicate via ethernet database files (which is what VMware Server virtual disks are in essence) while they are in use and with great network efficiency (it installs a driver into the Linux kernel which intercepts disk block write operations and replicates them in almost real-time to the target server via network). This solution (b) would cost the price of two Double-Take for Linux licenses (source and target server), which is something near 3,000 US$, so perhaps solution (a) is in order if you can afford a one hour down-time at night to stop the Openserver virtual machine and copy it over to server B the standard way (with rsync or some such).
I would go for the ESX setup plus iSCSI as it is the most straight forward and probably cheaper than using Double-Take plus the free "VMware server for Linux". Unless you can totally shutdown OpenServer at night for one hour, in which case you can build a totally free (as in beer) solution (except for the hardware price).
.
- Follow-Ups:
- References:
- Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Steve M. Fabac, Jr.
- Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Nico Kadel-Garcia
- Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Bill Campbell
- Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- From: Nico Kadel-Garcia
- Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- Prev by Date: Re: WANTED: SCO 5.0.6 Development System
- Next by Date: Re: WANTED: SCO 5.0.6 Development System
- Previous by thread: Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- Next by thread: Re: Beginnning to think about VMware and SCO 5.0.5
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
