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Re: [LUG] Home server

 

On 06/04/13 15:54, bad apple wrote:
On 06/04/13 08:33, Neil Winchurst wrote:
I would choose VBox since I have used it a lot in the past. But I am
not clear about why I would need to install a 'normal' distro on it
and then VBox. Since this is an old computer which I no longer use
surely I can just use it as a way of learning about all this. If it
all goes pear shaped for whatever reason it won't really matter, I can
just start again.

Meanwhile I have my current box which will not be affected, to start
with anyway.

Thanks

Neil

Well, you did say you were interested in setting up a linux server
didn't you? As others have said, there's essentially no difference in
the software - just about any distro can be used equally on a tiny
netbook, full size workstation or an entire data centres worth of blade
clusters, it's much more about how you admin and use the system. And the
first and most important difference from your normal computers linux
install and a server build is that a server needs to be stable,
non-volatile and you are absolutely not allowed to be able to completely
trash it in a moment of experimentation!

So you set up a stable, known good base OS and then go from there, hence
slapping a virtualization environment on it immediately and from then on
working in that. So now, as you say, if it goes pear shaped for any
reason and you have to start again it's a lot easier working with VMs.
Just for a start, you probably won't have to start again, you just roll
back through your snapshot tree until a point where you can resume your
failed experiment.

More to the point, is there ANY reason whatsoever why you wouldn't do
this? It's all about virtualization these days. The vast majority of
linux servers out there these days are either virtualized instances or
virtual hosts themselves.

No reason really. It is just that to start with, as I know so little (read almost nothing) about running servers, I am planning to use this old box as a learning curve. While learning I do not plan to attach it to anything else so if there are any problems it will just affect that box.

If I then decide to go right into it I will then follow your advice and start again in the way you suggest. But perhaps my ideas on this are not workable. If this is a bad idea, or just plain pointless, please let me know.

If you prefer, you could cut straight to the chase and install a bare
metal hypervisor OS instead, such as the free VMWare ESXi or Oracle VM
options: you'll get a very basic, bare bones system (linux based) on the
bare metal who's only job is to get virtualization running immediately.
Personally I would go with CentOS + KVM for my server base (or Debian +
KVM) but you've also got BSD + jails/chroots, Solaris + Xen, VMWare
VSphere, Linux + VServer or OpenVZ... the world's your oyster really,
and they're all free. Probably shouldn't mention it around here but
don't forget you can get a 180 day free trial of windows server 2012 to
play with as well, which is not only another very decent server OS but
has it's own vastly improved hypervisor + tool stack these days too.

Just trust me on this :]

I will indeed do just that. I have long ago learnt that, when I think I know better, I usually don't!


You definitely DO want to go the virtualization route, you just haven't
realised it yet. You can thank me later when you're a highly skilled
self-taught linux guru.



Neil


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