Should I virtualise Ubuntu server?

[bayerex]

Hi all,

I'm planning to make the leap from Windows 2008 to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server as I'm sick of the poor performance issues of Windows.

My question is: Should I install Ubuntu directly on the server or within VMware (workstation 9), perhaps running on top of Ubuntu Desktop 12.04. I see the obvious vm benefits; snapshots, flexibility etc. but I don't want to risk compromising performance too much. Yes I will probably try both out anyway however I'm just interested in gathering some opinions from some experts out there.

This server will be dedicated to hosting OTRS and SugarCRM CE for 10-20 agents/users (plus 5 OTRS customers at any one time).
Dell Poweredge R300
Quad Core Xeon L5410 (2.33GHZ)
8GB RAM

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Bayerex

[crythias]

It doesn't appear that you'll see any appreciable different between virtual and physical as long as similar ram is provisioned.

[bayerex]

ok and what o/s would you recommend to run VMware? Ubuntu desktop a good choice, or not?

[crythias]

ok and what o/s would you recommend to run VMware? Ubuntu desktop a good choice, or not?

I ... If you pressed me for host, I'd say esxi, otherwise, I don't think it really matters what OS you're choosing as a vm host as long as the host is not a domain controller or running SQL or Exchange. If you pressed me for guest (what OTRS will run on) I would personally choose (and have chosen) Ubuntu netboot (personally prefer the 12.04 LTS), add apache, mysql, gcc, and install OTRS from source and cpan install dependencies. I tried debian stable, but I had other things (php 5.4) that were not optimal to install (dotdeb helped but if I were doing such things, I could do it in Ubuntu...)

The "Status Quo" CentOS/RedHat/SuSE distributions are fine enough if you want to do the rpm things, though (this is my opinion) I've had enough problems with out of date RPMs and packages that I mostly don't want to install "packages" for items I insist on being uptodate. (Also, disable selinux).

Interestingly (or not), my new passion is using git rather than download/untar for updates of otrs.

All I need to do is

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git clone git://github.com/OTRS/otrs.git /opt/otrs

and then

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cd /opt/otrs
git checkout rel_3-2-6

now, follow the rest of installation instructions.
Once I've got it the way I want:

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cd /opt/otrs
git add . 
git commit -m "My changes"

when I make changes, I'll

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git add .
git commit -m "new changes - reason"

then do git fetch/git merge (to specific tagged releases) -- or, if I'm intrepid, just merge from master -- latest bleeding edge bugfixes -- to make sure I'm uptodate with the latest revision

There's probably more to it than this, but I've probably over spoken, too.

[bayerex]

Thanks for all your feedback and sorry that I've only now had chance to respond. I take your point about esxi. Having done some other research it seems like the only rational approach to running vmware on a server and keeping the unnecessary resource drains out of the picture. I will install Ubuntu server 12.04LTS as my guest.

I'm curious about the git method you shared. Are you basically saying you can use 'git' to download OTRS and implement all your changes within a few commands? I guess the latter is kind of like a CVS? Very interesting though. I'm looking forward to getting into the linux way of doing things.