what would YOU do?

[tonythemediaguy]

I have a dedicated cord 2 duo quad with 4GB ram, 2TB hard drive space from a RAID10 array. I need to use this server to host Zimbra Network Edition plus mobile accounts for at least a few hundred people. I also need to host less than 20 very low traffic websites.

I've posted a couple of posts on here about vmware and zimbra etc... So what would any of you do? To get the most performance out of Zimbra, and run an isolated instance of lamp w/control panel.

Would you run 2 vm servers? Would you install Zimbra natively and run a vm server with your lamp install? Run the lamp natively and run zimbra in a vm server? What kind of performance can I get running it natively vs running it in a vm?

I need to be able to host at least a few hundred mailboxes on this eventually.

Thanks for your input!

Tony

[uxbod]

Maybe have a read through this Virtualization Zimbra thread if not already done so.

[Klug]

If the LAMP needs are really very low, I'd setup this way :
. supported OS on the hardware (supported by ZCS and the virtualisation tool)
. ZCS "directly" on the server
. a virtualisation tool on the server (VMWare or Xen)
. a light VM (256 MB is enough for very low needs and LAMP)

I've done that for a customer, main OS is RHEL 4.6, the virtualisation tool is VMWare Server (free with nice graphical interface) and the VM (256 MB, one vCPU) runs CentOS 4.6.

[uxbod]

On my home office server I run Xen setup as follows :-

Dom0: Syslog for all my DomUs and other secret goodies - 256MB
Dom1: MailScanner (pre-filtering before ZCS) - 1024MB
Dom2: ZCS - 3072MB
Dom3: Asterisk (VoIP) - 1024MB
Dom4: WWW - 768MB

I have no performance issues and everything just ticks along nicely.

[tonythemediaguy]

Thanks everybody for the advice. I think I'll go with Ubuntu 7.10 64 bit for base server, and install Zimbra 64 bit natively and then install vmware or xen and run a small lamp server with only a small amount of ram.

Thanks a lot!

Tony

[durchanek]

You may run into following issues:
- Ubuntu 7.10 is not supported by zimbra
- Ubuntu picked KVM over Xen in Hardy Heron. According to Launchpad and Ubuntu mailling list, current Xen in Hardy is broken (5 days before release), so Xen in Ubuntu will probably sux from now
Because I like Xen much more than VMware I would go for some Xen-friendly distro (Debian Etch is a piece of cake to setup or maybe CentOS/Fedora), put Zimbra into its own DomU and LAMP server into another DomU.

[tonythemediaguy]

Thanks. I realized about the 7.10 Ubuntu when I went to download zimbra.

I am currently testing centos 5.1 as a base, with vmware 1.05 on top of that. I have my LAMP inside a virtual machine running in vmware. I have Zimbra installed side by side with vmware server. I had to adjust a port on the vmware install because of a conflict with zimbra, but other than that it seems to be ok.

Sounds like Xen may be a better way to go though, as I understand it runs directly on the hardware. I keep hearing that it's difficult to setup. Does Xen have a similar web based interface or a way for me to monitor the virtual machines (or rather dom's?) remotely? So that I can check resources, and/or reallocate, restart, etc...?

I actually have been running Zimbra on Ubuntu 6.06 for almost a year now. I'm more comfortable on the debian/ubuntu side than the red hat/centos side.

Thanks for your help and advice,


Tony