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AR15.COM
7/6/2016 10:43:26 AM EDT
1) as an example - has anyone ever used a remote X session in linux?  I used to could use X client on my local PC to run any program remotely on a server, but X rendered it on my local PC.  How can we do this with virtualization?

2)  im planning on running everything from a 256GB SSD.  Is there a general strategy to maximize use of wear leveling?  It doesnt appear that ESXi supports TRIM, so keeping the drive with as much free space as possible seems really important here.  do I just put 1 partition on the drive and boot esxi on it and use a folder on that as root for all esi isos/storage/Vdisks?  or what?  is there any general guidance or strategy to do this?
7/6/2016 11:26:41 AM EDT
[#1]
Regarding #2.

Install ESXi to a USB thumb drive then add your SSD as a VMFS Datastore.   On newer drives I wouldn't worry about wear.  I run several VMs from SSDs in a home lab and haven't come across any issues.
7/6/2016 11:37:03 AM EDT
[#2]
Quoted:
1) as an example - has anyone ever used a remote X session in linux?  I used to could use X client on my local PC to run any program remotely on a server, but X rendered it on my local PC.  How can we do this with virtualization?

2)  im planning on running everything from a 256GB SSD.  Is there a general strategy to maximize use of wear leveling?  It doesnt appear that ESXi supports TRIM, so keeping the drive with as much free space as possible seems really important here.  do I just put 1 partition on the drive and boot esxi on it and use a folder on that as root for all esi isos/storage/Vdisks?  or what?  is there any general guidance or strategy to do this?
View Quote


1. Usually this is done via SSH X forwarding. ssh to the remote machine as you normally would and run the xwindows program. When you x-forward the program on the remote server is killed if the connection drops. So you can not run the program, disconnect, and then come back to it later. If you need that then I recommend something like the tightvncserver package that runs an xwindows session in the background connected to a vnc server. You can then use any vnc client directly, or with ssh forwarding, to connect to a running instance and program already in progress

2. Usually in vmware we make a small 8gb partition for esxi to to installed on and then the rest of the drive for vms. But like was recommended you can install it to a thumb drive and use the ssd for vm storage only. I have had issues with thumb drives wearing out on really heavy systems but that is not the norm. If you buy a sandisk, samsung, kingston, or intel drive, especially the enterprise ones, i wouldnt worry about it. If you can disable atime on the underlying vm's filesystems that will help too.
7/6/2016 12:15:30 PM EDT
[#3]

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Quoted:
1. Usually this is done via SSH X forwarding. ssh to the remote machine as you normally would and run the xwindows program. When you x-forward the program on the remote server is killed if the connection drops. So you can not run the program, disconnect, and then come back to it later. If you need that then I recommend something like the tightvncserver package that runs an xwindows session in the background connected to a vnc server. You can then use any vnc client directly, or with ssh forwarding, to connect to a running instance and program already in progress



2. Usually in vmware we make a small 8gb partition for esxi to to installed on and then the rest of the drive for vms. But like was recommended you can install it to a thumb drive and use the ssd for vm storage only. I have had issues with thumb drives wearing out on really heavy systems but that is not the norm. If you buy a sandisk, samsung, kingston, or intel drive, especially the enterprise ones, i wouldnt worry about it. If you can disable atime on the underlying vm's filesystems that will help too.
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Quoted:

1) as an example - has anyone ever used a remote X session in linux?  I used to could use X client on my local PC to run any program remotely on a server, but X rendered it on my local PC.  How can we do this with virtualization?



2)  im planning on running everything from a 256GB SSD.  Is there a general strategy to maximize use of wear leveling?  It doesnt appear that ESXi supports TRIM, so keeping the drive with as much free space as possible seems really important here.  do I just put 1 partition on the drive and boot esxi on it and use a folder on that as root for all esi isos/storage/Vdisks?  or what?  is there any general guidance or strategy to do this?





1. Usually this is done via SSH X forwarding. ssh to the remote machine as you normally would and run the xwindows program. When you x-forward the program on the remote server is killed if the connection drops. So you can not run the program, disconnect, and then come back to it later. If you need that then I recommend something like the tightvncserver package that runs an xwindows session in the background connected to a vnc server. You can then use any vnc client directly, or with ssh forwarding, to connect to a running instance and program already in progress



2. Usually in vmware we make a small 8gb partition for esxi to to installed on and then the rest of the drive for vms. But like was recommended you can install it to a thumb drive and use the ssd for vm storage only. I have had issues with thumb drives wearing out on really heavy systems but that is not the norm. If you buy a sandisk, samsung, kingston, or intel drive, especially the enterprise ones, i wouldnt worry about it. If you can disable atime on the underlying vm's filesystems that will help too.


1) I'm old school... I ssh to a box and then start a screen session, so if my connection drops, all I have to do is reconnect... But I spend most of my time on the command line, not using graphical tools.



 
7/6/2016 12:22:29 PM EDT
[#4]
holy crap those industrial grade SLC sdhc cards are freaking $$$
7/6/2016 3:43:39 PM EDT
[#5]
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Quoted:

1) I'm old school... I ssh to a box and then start a screen session, so if my connection drops, all I have to do is reconnect... But I spend most of my time on the command line, not using graphical tools.
 
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
1) as an example - has anyone ever used a remote X session in linux?  I used to could use X client on my local PC to run any program remotely on a server, but X rendered it on my local PC.  How can we do this with virtualization?

2)  im planning on running everything from a 256GB SSD.  Is there a general strategy to maximize use of wear leveling?  It doesnt appear that ESXi supports TRIM, so keeping the drive with as much free space as possible seems really important here.  do I just put 1 partition on the drive and boot esxi on it and use a folder on that as root for all esi isos/storage/Vdisks?  or what?  is there any general guidance or strategy to do this?


1. Usually this is done via SSH X forwarding. ssh to the remote machine as you normally would and run the xwindows program. When you x-forward the program on the remote server is killed if the connection drops. So you can not run the program, disconnect, and then come back to it later. If you need that then I recommend something like the tightvncserver package that runs an xwindows session in the background connected to a vnc server. You can then use any vnc client directly, or with ssh forwarding, to connect to a running instance and program already in progress

2. Usually in vmware we make a small 8gb partition for esxi to to installed on and then the rest of the drive for vms. But like was recommended you can install it to a thumb drive and use the ssd for vm storage only. I have had issues with thumb drives wearing out on really heavy systems but that is not the norm. If you buy a sandisk, samsung, kingston, or intel drive, especially the enterprise ones, i wouldnt worry about it. If you can disable atime on the underlying vm's filesystems that will help too.

1) I'm old school... I ssh to a box and then start a screen session, so if my connection drops, all I have to do is reconnect... But I spend most of my time on the command line, not using graphical tools.
 



You are correct. I use screen (or tmux) as well for that reason. But xforwarding works a bit differently. Using tighvncserver is similar to using screen in this situation.
7/7/2016 7:05:28 PM EDT
[#6]
I've gotten to where I prefer tmux to screen. I also use tightvnc for the RHEL server with a graphical UI (home). None of our work servers have desktops.
7/7/2016 7:11:42 PM EDT
[#7]
Quoted:
2)  im planning on running everything from a 256GB SSD.  Is there a general strategy to maximize use of wear leveling?  It doesnt appear that ESXi supports TRIM, so keeping the drive with as much free space as possible seems really important here.  do I just put 1 partition on the drive and boot esxi on it and use a folder on that as root for all esi isos/storage/Vdisks?  or what?  is there any general guidance or strategy to do this?
View Quote


Yes, use a good SSD, and don't worry about it.  Seriously.

Watch the SMART data occasionally if you want, good SSDs don't wear out quickly, even without TRIM.  Even a lot of the consumer SSDs would need a *full drive write* every day to wear them out within five years, and better models would take three to five full drive writes every day for five years.

I'm not even talking SLC drives, just MLC.  In real world tests, they had to write the entire drive capacity almost 3,000 times to kill an Intel 335, and that wasn't even at the higher end of the results.  Here's an Intel 520 that's at over 3,000 drive writes, and still going.
7/7/2016 11:13:20 PM EDT
[#8]
Thanks for all the advice, the zotac came in.  got an extreme pro 240g ssd and extre!me pro 16g sdhc to replace the other orders.  I customized my esxi6 ISO with the extra network and sata drivers I'll need so whem the ram and ssd and sdhc gets in I should be ready.

Actually I didn't check to see if this thing will boot from sdhc.  Just something about a USB sticking out that rubs me wrong.
7/8/2016 6:45:33 AM EDT
[#9]
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Thanks for all the advice, the zotac came in.  got an extreme pro 240g ssd and extre!me pro 16g sdhc to replace the other orders.  I customized my esxi6 ISO with the extra network and sata drivers I'll need so whem the ram and ssd and sdhc gets in I should be ready.

Actually I didn't check to see if this thing will boot from sdhc.  Just something about a USB sticking out that rubs me wrong.
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Use something like this and it barely sticks out at all.
7/8/2016 5:00:56 PM EDT
[#10]
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Quoted:


Use something like this and it barely sticks out at all.
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Thanks for all the advice, the zotac came in.  got an extreme pro 240g ssd and extre!me pro 16g sdhc to replace the other orders.  I customized my esxi6 ISO with the extra network and sata drivers I'll need so whem the ram and ssd and sdhc gets in I should be ready.

Actually I didn't check to see if this thing will boot from sdhc.  Just something about a USB sticking out that rubs me wrong.


Use something like this and it barely sticks out at all.


I use one of those to hold MP3s for my car stereo, don't want the dumb thing snapping off.

If this was for a desktop computer, have any unused USB headers on the motherboard?  Use one of the expansion plate USB parts and just have it inside the case.

or something like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Motherboard-4-Pin-Header-USBMBADAPT/dp/B000IV6S9S
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Motherboard-Header-Adapter-USBMBADAPT2/dp/B002GNU2V6
7/10/2016 10:00:51 PM EDT
[#11]
do us regular hobbyists not get access to the web client?  I noticed that I had built my first VM as a version11 and apparently we cant configure everything with the esxi6 fat client as it appears the fat client is being slowly killed off?

do we just need to build all our servers as v8 in order to be able to fully poke around?
7/10/2016 10:29:55 PM EDT
[#12]
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Quoted:
do us regular hobbyists not get access to the web client?  I noticed that I had built my first VM as a version11 and apparently we cant configure everything with the esxi6 fat client as it appears the fat client is being slowly killed off?

do we just need to build all our servers as v8 in order to be able to fully poke around?
View Quote


The web client is part of vCenter which is a licensed product.  You can build them as version 8 or spend $200 year on VMUG Advantage and get access to vCenter as well as some other products.  
7/18/2016 10:11:49 AM EDT
[#13]
anyone tried running the asa100v in an esxi?  it appears you can run it in a regular vmware player, but that to run it on esxi you need vcenter?

I was able to get the CSR1000v (cisco cloud services router, basically the cloud version of an ASR) on the ESXi no prob, pretty much anyone with a CCO account can get a free license for it for 60 days then it reverts to 100kbps max.  runs like a champ, though requires like 2GB of RAM.

Also, this ova/ovf format.  Will hyperv/xen/kvm also load up these appliances, or is that a vmware only thing?
7/18/2016 12:17:12 PM EDT
[#14]
Quote History
Quoted:
do us regular hobbyists not get access to the web client?  I noticed that I had built my first VM as a version11 and apparently we cant configure everything with the esxi6 fat client as it appears the fat client is being slowly killed off?

do we just need to build all our servers as v8 in order to be able to fully poke around?
View Quote


ESXi Embedded Host Client: https://labs.vmware.com/flings/esxi-embedded-host-client
7/18/2016 4:04:04 PM EDT
[#15]
wow this VMUG access is slick, very cool stuff you can do on a non-prod system like what Ive built.  Ive already talked to my boss about it, i think he may get me and 2 others memberships, thanks for the tip.
8/11/2016 12:55:27 PM EDT
[#16]
You can also use VMware Workstation Pro 12 to administer the hosts and VMs up to VM version 11