{"id":831,"date":"2011-04-14T13:33:18","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T12:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/?p=831"},"modified":"2011-04-14T15:30:55","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T14:30:55","slug":"server-changes-xen-to-kvm-new-hardware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/2011\/04\/14\/server-changes-xen-to-kvm-new-hardware\/","title":{"rendered":"Server Changes XEN to KVM \/ New Hardware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I was in the data center reinstalling the Server Host system. I successfully (or not) switched from XEN virtualization to KVM. The reason behind this change (since I&#8217;m running XEN for over 4 years now) was that KVM seems to be the future of linux based virtualization and I tried to get rid of various XEN related kernel crashes I already reported earlier last year.<\/p>\n<p>In order to prepare the migration I switched all existing guests from XEN-PVM (paravirtualized) to XEN-HVM (hardware virtualized) and prepared the new configuration files for libvirt. In the datacenter I replaced the network uplink with my notebook to present you a temporary &#8220;maintenance page&#8221;. The installation of Debian 6 as host system went smooth and after some typo fixing in my libvirt xml files the I could boot the evemaps guest without problems. After a short verification that everything was running I switched the cables and DOTLAN was back live after exactly 1 hour downtime. Everything was looking fine &#8230; until.<\/p>\n<p>This night the server crashed again around 2am UTC without any reason, logfiles, etc. Likely some weird locking kernel panic who knows. The server was rebooted this morning directly after I woke up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hardware<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The hardware DOTLAN EveMaps is running on is know over 4 years old (bought in February 2007)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>BOARD: Tyan Tomcat n3400b<\/li>\n<li>CPU: AMD Opteron 1216 (DualCore 2.4GHz)<\/li>\n<li>RAM: 8GB PC5300 DDR2, non-ecc (initial 4gb later 8gb)<\/li>\n<li>HDD: 2x 250gb + 2x 1TB<\/li>\n<li>CHASSIS: Chenbro RM217<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After various problems and crashes last year (when assigning 2 cpus to a guest) I always tried to fix the problem on the software side. Switching from Debian to CentOS\/RHEL Kernel and Xen Subsystem and now to Debian\/KVM Solution. Even a running memtest last year didn&#8217;t showed any major problems but they&#8217;re still preset (even I lowered the crash risc by limiting the guests). Crashes on strange load situations, crashing guests and kernel panics rebooting the dom0 (host).<\/p>\n<p>I order to continue to provide a stable and speedy service I decided it&#8217;s about ****ing time to upgrade the hardware. I really hope the hardware upgrade\/change + combined processor switch helps.<\/p>\n<p>I just ordered<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Xeon E5620 (Quad Core, 2.4GHz)<\/li>\n<li>Supermicro Mainboard (integrated KVM!)<\/li>\n<li>16GB Registered ECC RAM<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>to replace the outdated components. I&#8217;ll do the upgrade sometime in the next weeks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can I help?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of course: If you like DOTLAN EveMaps please use the <a href=\"\/donate\">PayPal Donate<\/a> option and help me to continue to provide this hopefully usefull service.<\/p>\n<p>Wollari<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I was in the data center reinstalling the Server Host system. I successfully (or not) switched from XEN virtualization to KVM. The reason behind this change (since I&#8217;m running XEN for over 4 years now) was that KVM seems to be the future of linux based virtualization and I tried to get rid of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evemaps.dotlan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}