Re: Query about suitable small servers for Xen / Debian

[Chuck Zmudzinski <brchuckz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/20/2023 10:02 AM, Leigh Brown wrote:
> Hi Chuck,
> 
> On 2023-09-20 12:36, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
>> On 9/20/2023 6:40 AM, Leigh Brown wrote:
>>> On 2023-09-20 10:45, Jo Mills wrote:
>>>> I am considering re-building my home network using a couple of HP
>>>> MicroServers in the following manner, and would be very glad of any
>>>> advice or comments on the suitability of the proposed hardware.
>>>> 
>>>> Two off identical HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen10 Plus Intel Xeon E-2314
>>>> Quad-Core 2.80GHz MicroServers wired back to back using 1Gb Ethernet
>>>> (or faster) for a DRBD connection.
>>>> 
>>>> Over this will run Xen.
>>>> 
>>>> Dom0 would be Debian.
>>>> 
>>>> The server must support at least 4 off Ethernet devices each of which
>>>> may be addressed uniquely via passthrough.  VMs will be either Debian
>>>> or MS-Windows.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm not after any great performance, reliability and stability are
>>>> what's important.
>>> 
>>> I ran Debian/Xen on a pair of HP MicroServer N40L servers for a number
>>> of years, including a pair of VMs using DRBD as shared storage. It was
>>> totally reliable. YMMV :-)
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Leigh.
>>> 
>> 
>> Debian may be OK for your application which is as a server,
> 
> Great, that's what Jo was asking.
> 
>>                                                           but I started
>> using Debian for Xen virtualization of desktop systems, and Debian was 
>> a
>> disaster. I migrated to Fedora and end eventually to AlmaLinux using 
>> community
>> supported Xen builds for RHEL 9 and its downstreams such as AlmaLinux 
>> which
>> I use as Xen dom0. The Fedora / Red Hat ecosystem will provide much 
>> better
>> stability than Debian, IMO.
> 
> For your use case.  I still use Debian/Xen, having recently upgraded to
> Debian 12, and had no issues with the upgrade and things continue to be
> as reliable and maintenance free as ever.
> 
>>                           The Debian Xen team still refuses to ship 
>> systemd
>> units even though the default init system on Debian is systemd! See 
>> this
>> for proof:
>> 
>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1028251#59
>> 
>> In that message a Debian user (me) indicated a preference that Debian 
>> ship
>> native systemd units to start the various Xen services. Take a look at 
>> how
>> the Debian Xen package maintainer defended the decision to refuse to 
>> use
>> systemd units. He went off on a tangent about all the work that was put 
>> in
>> by Xen packagers to write sysv init scripts to make upgrading to the 
>> next
>> Debian major release go more smoothly. He didn't say it explicitly, but 
>> he
>> implies that it is just too hard to migrate those sysv init scripts to 
>> systemd.
>> I just don't believe it cannot be done. The Debian Xen Team refuses to 
>> use
>> systemd, and they really have not given a good reason why not to use it 
>> on a
>> system that has had systemd as the default init system for almost ten 
>> years now.
>> And that bug is only one of several bugs that has been reported to 
>> Debian affecting
>> Xen that Debian refuses to fix even after various members of the 
>> community have
>> proposed patches to fix the bugs.
>> 
>> On the other hand, my experience with Fedora is that if there is a bug 
>> affecting
>> Xen and you propose a patch to fix bug, they just fix the bug and don't 
>> waste
>> time ranting about how hard it is to migrate sysv init scripts to 
>> systemd.
> 
> I'm appreciative of the time that all the maintainers of all the various
> distributions put in to provide the best possible products that they 
> can.
> It's great that we can select from a variety of options the one that 
> best
> meets our personal needs and preferences.
> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> Chuck
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Leigh.

Hi Leigh,

Thanks for the feedback. I am happy Debian works well for your use case.
By all means be grateful for the work of the Debian Xen Team if what
they do works for you. I am grateful that Fedora and Alma Linux serve my
needs well. I wish I could say the same about Debian, but Debian just
didn't work for me as well as Fedora and Alma do. I hope you can accept
that fact.

I just want to observe the OP wants to run Windows on Xen, and I think
that might be closer to my use case than yours. So for the OP, I still
think the Fedora / Red Hat ecosystem might be better. It might depend on
whether the OP wants to run Windows servers or Windows desktops as
Xen guests. If it's servers, maybe Debian will work, but if desktops, I
would recommend steering clear of Debian, at least for dom0, but maybe
also for domU guests because it is also difficult to install Debian desktop
from the live iso installer, and no other distro that I have tried has
that problem but Debian. Last I heard a few weeks ago, there is still
a Debian bug open about that problem. So, the OP will most likely need
to learn how to install Debian via debootstrap from the command line
to get a Debian desktop domU installed on Xen. But if the OP is a skilled
administrator who just wants to install Debian and Windows servers
without a GUI desktop environment, Debian might be an excellent choice
for that use case.

So, let us let the OP decide what to do based on what we and the
others who post their experiences here might offer as friendly advice.

Kind regards,

Chuck