[HLUG] Virtulisation and file systems

[Julian Robbins]

Mark Broadbent wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> Paul wrote:
>> We are looking to rationalise the number of PCs that are on and 
>> running 24 hours a day, and doing very little most of the time other 
>> than wasting electricity and generating heat.  Currently we have:
>>
>> * Windows 2003 R2 file server
>> * Ubuntu 7.10 web development server
>> * Windows XP weather station PC (uploads data from weather station to 
>> internet every 15 mins)
>> * General "office" PC (Windows XP, probably upgrading to Vista)
>>
>> I would like to combine the first three into one machine.  The 
>> existing file server (which has a proper server motherboard with a 
>> 3GHz P4, 500GB of RAID1 storage and 2GB RAM) can be rebuilt with 
>> Ubuntu 8.04 (probably server with Gnome added) and used for the file 
>> serving and web serving.  I would add an extra hard disk for the 
>> operating system and use the 500GB RAID as /home.  This would get rid 
>> of the web dev server, which is an old 1.6GHz P4.
>>
>> This machine also has a DLT tape backup drive and I am currently 
>> using Backup Exec.  What tape backup options are available Linux; 
>> preferably point-and-click rather than command line?  I am not 
>> expecting to be able to restore old BackupExec backups.
>
> There are plenty of backup programs, but most tend to be command line 
> based (i.e. set-up once and it just works).  Amanda is one of the more 
> famous ones from memory.  I'm not about GUI based though - I think KDE 
> have one called kdar??
>
> Try here:
> http://www.linux.org/apps/all/Administration/Backup.html
We've used backuppc for about 6 years at work and its very good. has a 
nice Web based interface. Works best however backing up to disk rather 
than tape.

>
>> We also synchronise it daily to two Maxtor 500GB OneTouch drives 
>> (only one connected at a time) as a secondary backup.  What Linux 
>> software is available for that (again point-and-click)?
>
> Surely that's just a single rsync command!  However there are GUI 
> front-ends for it.  Try:
>
> http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/ or
Yes rsync is the way to go. I used grsync a bit recently, and its fine.

> http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/rsyncweb.htm
>
>> Is it possible to convert the 500GB drives (within the server and the 
>> Maxtor USB ones) from NTFS to some file system that Linux supports 
>> natively, without having to wipe and reformat?  I'm guessing the 
>> answer is NO there!
>
> Nope, just backup, format, restore.
>
>> Also for the USB ones I would like them to be readable on Windows PCs 
>> too, so I assume they will need to be FAT32?  Or is Linux write 
>> support for NTFS reliable now?
>
> I believe user-space NTFS using the FUSE file-system is stable for 
> writes.  Look for ntfs-3g I think.
>
>> The weather station software is Windows only, and won't run on Vista 
>> (so can't go on the office PC when updated).  This has to remain on 
>> either Windows XP or Windows 2000.  However it's system resource 
>> usage is light.  This is the problem one.
>>
>> I would like to run this as a virtual machine on the Ubuntu server, 
>> but I need to sort out whether it will communicate with the weather 
>> station OK this way.  The interface is USB.  Does anyone know what 
>> the situation is with virtualisation environments such as VMware or 
>> VirtualBox with regard to accessing physical USB ports from the guest 
>> operating system?  I don't think WINE is viable for this as the 
>> weather station software is a bit iffy and uses loads of DLLs etc.
>
> Most VM environments will allow access to external peripherals, either 
> through direct mapped hardware or some sort of emulation.  I know 
> VMWare can do this and so can Xen.

Vmware is good. but make sure you choose the right version. VMserver 
runs as a service and can be run headless, ie can connect to it from 
another pc. But you can only do one roll back of state, . VMplayer, cant 
run without a GUI, but has a few more bells and whistles. But it can 
store several states where you can roll back to. VMWare workstation is 
the best of both words but you have to pay for it.

Virtual box is nice as its fully GPL, but I found it a bit brittle 
compared to VMware to be honest. But for testing stuff or running 
windows on a Linux desktop is not bad at all.

Julian


>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Mark
>