[PVE-User] Feedback

[paul]

Hi,

I have just recently tried PVE, and thought I would offer some feedback...

I was very impressed with the installation.
It was quick and simple, and I thought it had a professional look and feel.

I am also very impressed with the PVE web console.
Looks professional, quick and easy to use, good feedback on cpu, 
memory,disks, etc
Also the virtual server console feature is great
I think the PVE team has done a great job. Thanks for making it open source!

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My server is a DNUK Netserver G420HS,
    2X dual-core Opteron 2216 cpu (2.4GHz)
    16 GB ram
    7X SATA hdd, with hardware raid (Adaptec AAR-2820SA)

I haven't seen any hardware issues so far.
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Originally, I had openvz installed, but wanted to try full virtuallization, 
so I installed xen
I managed to install xen on its own hard disk, and I configured my exisiting 
openvz install to run as a xen virtual server.
This way I could experiment with both.

I found xen worked, but it was nearly impossible to work out why, when 
things didn't work.
So I looked into KVM, and found your link :-)

I had one spare hard disk, which I installed pve on.
I then copied existing openvz virtual disks, and config files to pve, and 
they just magically appeared in the pve web console
I started them, and they all just worked!

It didn't take make long to decide that this was better than what I had 
(xen)
So after I was sure I had copied everything across to my one pve disk, I 
erased the other six disks,
set them up as raid10 and installed a fresh copy of pve to this new logical 
disk.

I had issues with this, since both pve installs created an LVM volume group 
named pve.
When booted, the system could only activate and use one of them.
So I rebooted with a bootable linux cd, and renamed the first volume group 
(single disk install), to pve-old
Then when I rebooted back into my new pve install, I could manually mount 
the pve-old volume, and recover all my virtual servers, and other files.

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Some 'would be nice to have' improvements -

Installation -

1) When selecting the hard drive to install to, also display the disk sizes 
and possibly the logical disk labels (from the raid controller)

2) When the install begins, check all attached hard disks for existing LVM 
volume groups, named pve.
    If one exists, use a different name, or rename the old one (maybe pve2, 
etc ?).
    This will enable you to do a fresh install on seperate disks, but still 
be able to access the existing virtual servers or files, for migration.

3) A choice for which network card to use, or to be able to configure all 
networking options during install
     i.e. can configure all network cards, bridge_ports,  vlans, nic 
bonding, etc
    Possibly have a quick install, and advanced install

4) I read a couple of threads regarding vlans and bonding, and couldn't find 
the packages in aptitude, to read the package info
    It took me a little while to figure this one out.
    However, you mentioned it in a recent post, and set 'deb 
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main' in your apt souces
    Would it be better to select from a list of mirrors, during install - 
i.e. I set mine to 'deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian etch main'


Web console -

1) To be able to add a new bridge. Then when creating a new virtual server, 
the option to select the new bridge (veth, tap)
     I know the drop down for the bridge is there, but I can't seem to make 
another bridge appear in it.

    I've tried the following -

    iface vmbr1 inet static
        address  xxxxx
        netmask  xxxxx
        gateway  xxxxx
        bridge_ports eth1

    This works from a debian/networking point of view, but vmbr1 doesn't 
appear anywhere in the web console.


Kind Regards,
Paul.