Jumped Off the Dock

Sometimes when you get to the end of the dock, you want to jump into the water. After getting comfortable (enough) with Proxmox I took the plunge and deleted ESXi 7 from my DL380 Gen9 and moved all of my VMs from the DL360G8 test server. Everything seems to work just fine.

I did not put the change the Smart Array P440ar Controller into IT mode. I left it in HBA mode with one mirror for Proxmox and another mirror for local ISOs. Now, that is a little overkill for the ISOs given they are enterprise SSDs. The other reason why I am not worried about HBA mode is that my VMs are on one of my NASes.

I did leave the (unconverted) ESXi VMs on the NAS and have the ESXi configuration backed up in case I need to revert. I like to have a solid fallback plan…

There is one major last thing I have to sort: I cannot get the bonded 10 GbE connections between the the DL380 and the RS1221+ to be stable. I am pretty sure that this is something with the bonding method I selected. There is no switch between the two – it is just NIC-to-NIC (times two). For now, I will let this sit for awhile.

Overall, I am impressed with Proxmox. VMs seem snappier that under ESXi. There are some quirks: there is no file manager as ESXi (really nice to have), the need to have different storage types for different purposes (head scratch) and the fact if you use LVM for iSCSI you cannot take snapshots (what?!?!).

About Mike Pelley

Let’s see… A little about me… I’ve been around information technology since 1983 with computers such as DEC Rainbows (weird machine – the standard DOS couldn’t format its own floppy disks – remember them? – and I had to format them on a friend’s IBM PC) to Radio Shack TRS-80 to Apple ][e and Apple //c in the beginning. I have programmed in 8-bit assembly language on 6502, FORTRAN and COBOL on IBM System/370 (and I still hate JCL), VAX BASIC and COBOL (and a weird and massive WordPerfect 4.0 macro) on DEC VMS (Alpha), C/C++ on Digital Unix (ALPHA), and C/C++, Perl (it may be powerful but I still hate it), PHP on Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, etc.). I have work with databases such as Digital RDB (later to become Oracle RDB), Oracle DBMS, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL on VAX, Alpha, Sun and Intel. Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn. See http://lnkd.in/nhTRZe I still think that Digital created some of the best ideas in the world: VAX clustering, DSSI disks (forerunner to SCSI) and the Alpha processor (first commercial 64-bit processor – Red Hat screamed on an Alpha!). DEC just could not seem to be able to give air conditioners away to someone lost in the Sahara Desert! VMware is one of the best ways to get the most out of an x64 server. And I have tried Oracle VM, Virtual Box and Microsoft Virtual Server. Outside of that I am a huge military history buff starting in the early 20th century. I love Ford Mustangs (my ’87 Mustang GT was awesome) and if I had the money I would have a Porsche 928S4. If I had a lot of money I would have a Porsche 911 Turbo. I also play too much AmrA 3 Exile mod. Over 5,000+ hours... I have a wonderful son, Cameron. I have a long suffering (Do you really need all that computer junk?) wife, Paula. I live in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.
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