Should I consolidate multiple identical VMs into BSD jails?

Posted by Josh on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Josh
Published on 2012-09-28T15:18:45Z Indexed on 2012/09/28 15:39 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 415

Filed under:

vmware-esxi

|

memory

|

freebsd

|

openfire

We run a number of Openfire XMPP/Jabber servers. Due to the way Openfire works, we cannot easily run multiple Openfire instances on one server, so I have 5 identical VMware ESXi VMs, each with CentOS, MySQl, Java, and Openfire. They're the exact same, except for their IP addresses, the actual Openfire MySQL database and it's config file.

I am wondering if this is the optimal configuration, or if it would be better to move these VMs to a single FreeBSD machine and put each one inside a FreeBSD jail. Specifically, I am wondering if the benefit of VMWare's Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) would outweight the cost of running 5 identical OSes. Would I end up using less memory with one large FreeBSD machine and java running in bsd jails?

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about vmware-esxi

VMWare ESXi, change the default path for a VM

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
For some reason VMWare ESXi has decided that one of my VMs is on a completely different path to the path it is actually on. So my VM is on /vmfs/volumes/long-guid-here/my-vm-name but when I try to open it I get the message "File < unspecified filename was not found." Which is not really surprising… >>> More
VMWare ESXi 3.5 Wake On Lan

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello everyone! I am using VMWare ESXi 3.5 on my server, and I want to be able to remotely boot the server up. In the bios settings of the computer, I enabled Wake on Lan. I know usually with Windows XP and other Windows Operating Systems, you have to also enable wake on lan in the network card settings… >>> More
blu-ray archiving in vmware ESXi 4

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, I need some advice about using blu-ray writer for archiving data on vmware ESXi 4. At office we have IBM System x3400 Tower server with ESXi 4 hipervisor and OpenSuse and CentOS GNU/Linux system as guests. Will blu-ray writer work in this setup, and if it will is there any particular model you… >>> More
Eject disk on Mac Pro running VMWare ESXi

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but I'm stuck. I installed VMWare ESXi on a Mac Pro. It's working great! The problem is that you press F12 to eject the disk, and F12 is what you use to shutdown ESX. I can power down, open the case, pull out the CD drive and use a paper clip to force the drawer… >>> More
I need to get VMWare Server running inside of a VMWare ESXi virtual machine

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Yes, I know running a virtual machine inside of a virtual machine is a bad idea. Yes, I know it will be very slow. However, our production system required VMs in VMWare server and I do not want to setup a real server for each of our developers for testing. I would like to be able to setup all of… >>> More

Related posts about memory

SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 2

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
Part 1 of this series was an introduction and overview of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. This part looks at SQL Server memory management and how the SQL engine responds to changing OS memory conditions. Part 2: SQL Server Memory Management As with any Windows process, sqlserver.exe has a virtual… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory - Part 1

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
SQL and Dynamic Memory Blog Post Series Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that allows the memory assigned to guest virtual machines to vary according to demand. Using this feature with SQL Server is supported, but how well does it work in… >>> More
Python Memory leak - Solved, but still puzzled

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Dear everyone, I have successfully debugged my own memory leak problems. However, I have noticed some very strange occurence. for fid, fv in freqDic.iteritems(): outf.write(fid+"\t") #ID for i, term in enumerate(domain): #Vector tfidf = self.tf(term… >>> More
SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that… >>> More