[ovirt-users] ovirt high points

[Johan Bernhardsson]

On September 7, 2017 19:01:58 Christopher Cox <ccox at endlessnow.com> wrote:



>
>>
>> Any links or ideas appreciated,
>
> oVirt is NOT VMware.  But if you do things "well" oVirt works quite
> well.  Follow the list to see folks that didn't necessarily do things
> "well" (sad, but true).
>
> I inherited this oVirt... not ideal for blades because it's better to
> have lots of networks.  We just have two blade fabrics, one for SAN and
> one for the rest, and it would be nice to have ovirtmgmt and migration
> networks be isolated.  With that said, with our massively VLAN'd setup,
> it does work and has been very reliable.  For performance reasons, I
> recommend that you attempt to dedicate a host for SPM, or at least keep
> the number of VMs deployed there to a minimum.  There are tweaks in the
> setup to keep VMs off the SPM node (talking mainly if you have a
> massively combined network like I have currently).
>
> We've survived many bad events with regards to SAN and power, which is a
> tribute to oVirt's reliability.  However, you can shoot yourself in the
> foot very easily with oVirt... so just be careful.
>
> Is VMware better?  Yes.  Is it more flexible than oVirt?  Yes. Is it
> more reliable than oVirt? Yes.  In other words, if money is of no
> concern, VMware and VCenter.
>
> We will likely never do VMware here due to cost (noting, that the cost
> is in VCenter, and IMHO, it's not horrible, but I do not control the
> wallet here, and we tend to prefer FOSS here... and FOSS is my personal
> preference as well).
>
> Companies generally speaking just want something that works.  And oVirt
> does work.  But if money is of no concern and you need the friendliness
> of something VCenter like (noting that not everyone needs VCenter or
> RHEV-M or oVirt Manager), then VMware is still better.
>
> If you don't need something VCenter like, I can also so say that libvirt
> (KVM) and virt-manager is also reasonable, and we use that as well.  But
> we also have a (free) ESXi (because we have to, forced requirement).
>
> The ovirtmgmt web ui is gross IMHO.  It's a perfect example of an
> overweight UI where a simplified UI would have been cleaner, faster and
> better.  Just because you know how to write thousands of lines of
> javascript doesn't mean you should.  Not everything needs to act like a
> trading floor application or facebook.  The art of efficient UI design
> has been lost.  With that said, the RESTful i/f part is nice.  Nice to
> the point of not needing the SDK.
>
> Finally, VMware can be expensive.  It's not a "one time" purchase.  It's
> HAS TO BE ongoing.  And it can get very expensive if not understood.
> With that said, if you have anything Microsoft in the enterprise, you
> already understand and are prepared to throw cash for IT infrastructure.
>   If you do go VMware, make sure to use a hefty Vcenter host as upgrades
> to VCenter involve a lot of bloat and waste.
>
> VMware can be a real "pain" support wise.  They can deprecate your
> entire hypervisor HW stack, especially true in a major release.  They
> can even deprecate HW in a minor release (I have fallen victim to this).
>
> Thus, again, if you have money to burn and have relatively short HW life
> cycles (less than 5 years for sure), AND that includes OS life cycles as
> well, then VMware is probably ok.  Not saying there aren't some problems
> on the oVirt side as well, just saying VMware has more expensive warts.
> And thus "paid support" becomes somewhat humorous (but in a sad sort of
> way).
>
> (oVirt community support ROCKS!  Just saying...)

>From my work with both VMware and ovirt. I must say that the ovirt 4.1 
installations I have is more reliable that the vsphere/vcenter 
installations I maintain.

But the key is to do it well. That applies to any virtualization solution. 
If you plan wrong and just throw it in you will have problems.

I use ovirt 4.1.* and gluster as a Backend. And the many things I thought 
about in loads of ways has made it rock solid. As a separate vlan for 
storage and migration and one for ovirtmanagement.

And yes this is an awesome community :)

/Johan