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Wabun
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

cPanel and VMware questions migrating from Citrix Xenserver.

Hi,

I am thinking of swapping from Citrix Xenserver to VMware, but finding some issues on my path, I was hoping some of you have made this migration path and are willing to share their experience. Funny enough looking around I noticed a lot are going from VMware to Citrix Xenserver, so I am eager to find out why.

I am using the Free version for test purpose, installed the latest and greatest ESXi v5.1.

- Firewall issues,

cPanel needs to have some additional ports open and I prefer to change some ports for example the ssh port.

Whatever I do, after each reboot it changes back to default, very frustating! found an article, but not sure if that's the correct way seems it might be vanished with updates in near future. Any solution?

- Converting existing VMs is not possible because I use CentOS5.x paravirtualized means problems! so can't use the VMware converter, need to build a new VM and convert as template, then migrate with cPanel all accounts, that's the plan so far, but to be honest I haven't found any better solution, going down for a long time is no option either.. Is this templating disabled in the ESXI free version? Any tips or hints for this templating?

I am sure I will get more of trouble on my path, so any advise is very welcome, in particulair in what NOT to do :-))

Thanks for reading.

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

To answer a number of your queries:

* cPanel is, in general, the ultimate in ultra-low budget hosting. For this reason, it's unsuprising that many of its users are using the ultimate in low budget virtualization (Xenserver).

* Firewall issues: Any ports that cPanel needs open are irrelevant to VMware. VMware's firewall does not filter any traffic whatsoever to guests. When you talk about changing ports, do you mean the SSH port on the ESXi host, or on the cPanel guest? If it's ESXi - I don't believe there's an easy way to change this, but the sensible option is leaving the default - and recommended - option of having SSH disabled. Anything you do there is likely to be unsupported anyway. If it's about changing the port within cPanel, this is unrelated to ESXi.

* Yes, deploying from templates is unavailable for a free version. I'm unsure why it's needed. You seem to refer to a single new VM, which you then want to convert to a template and deploy. In this case, you would just built the new VM and start using it without needs for templates.

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MikeSpears
Contributor
Contributor

@Josh, cPanel is an industry standard in the hosting industry, not just the "ultimate in ultra-low budget hosting" as you say.

@Wabun, I personally run ESXi 5 with a VM running CentOS 6/cPanel with no issues.

Wabun
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

@josh, Time to wake up, cPanel is one of the leading Hosting Panel providers, nothing to do with being cheap!

The fact I am trying first this ESXi is that it gives me something to compare with Citrix Xenserver.

Templating is free in Citrix Xenserver, and to be honest, what's the point to take it away in ESXI, when there are other ways to do the same..

Many other options are free as well in Citrix Xenserver and it seems that VMware ESXi [Free] is less free in use compared with CX or even XCP!

At least I don't have to be worried that my Citrix Xenserver has more then 32GB memory...  ESXi just won't allow more then 32GB.

Firewall, so basicaly this firewall is only protecting the host and let all traffic through, that's interesting?

@Mike, thanks a lot, this really helps.

Regards the conversion, I have tried last days with both converters, even export/import with the ovf format, but I still prefer to build a new VM from scratch.

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

You pretty much made my point for me with a post discussing what you want for free.

Moving onto your actual issues:

Wabun wrote:

Firewall, so basicaly this firewall is only protecting the host and let all traffic through, that's interesting?

Yes. It's there to protect the host.

Traffic doesn't "route" through ESXi's management interface. It's down to what you do at a guest level to filter it.

If you want VM level filtering, there are third party products that can manage this (look at what Juniper offer). Note it's more complicated than it looks - traffic can come in different physical NICs and on different VLANs - it's got to be more difficult than "allow this IP".

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Wabun
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Josh,

The fact that I am comparing 2 products doesn't mean I want to continue with a free version like ESXi only, it means I want to have a preview of what I am going to buy. It is just a huge investment to buy something and let's be honest, looking around here in the forum it seems quite a lot struggle with some things. VMware contacted but they simple do nothing when you have no license, pre sales quistions are not answered...

I am still waiting for weeks for a simple thing like: can I move VMs accross if the have the same CPU family?

For example the Intel Xeon L5630 and the Intel Xeon E3 1220L both no problem? but it seems there are some registers different, so will it work or not?

In Citrix Xenserver you have to have all CPU exactly the same!

You see, I only try to find out if this swap will be a good thing to do or not!

Thanks for yor reply.

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi,

You can move between CPUs which are fairly different, so long as it's not a major jump like Intel to AMD. This involves preconfiguring EVC. More details are here:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100321...

If you are just testing the software, you can download the 60 day trial and experience the Enterprise Plus features.

Wabun
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks, that very useful! :-))

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