It started, when I developed an itch to have a CENTOS 5.5 ServerCD, so I could setup my Physical and Vitual Machines, quickly. However CENTOS website does not provide one. It provides a live CD, which was of no use to me. And I was not in a mood (nor could afford) to download full 4.x GB of DVD. This desire to have a CENTOS ServerCD, changed to create a (minimalistic) Hypervisor CD, when I noticed RedHat’s virtualization solution, RHEV, or, RedHat Enterprise Virtualization. RHEV is a slim/cut down version of RHEL 6, working as a KVM Hypervisor, with a very small install foot-print. I noticed that it is a similar concept as Citrix XEN Server. If I can make such a CD / custom-distribution, I can use it to install the bare-minimum set of hypervisor packages (XEN or KVM) on my physical machines. Then, I can use the same CD to install a minimalistic (core) installation of a guest OS on the VMs I would create. Thus the usefulness is multi-fold.
Based on the idea above, I have created a customized version of CENTOS 5.5 x86_64 , named “Hypervisor Edition“. It is a bootable CD image (ISO), which provides a hypervisor (XEN or KVM), virt-manager, and minimal X windows interface. The ISO is 516 MB in size and the latest version can be downloaded from WBITT downloads section: http://downloads.wbitt.com/isos . The steps to create a similar CD yourself are in the cooker, here.
Below are the key features of this CD:
- YUM, wget, FTP client
- vi editor (vim-minimal)
- DHCP client
- SSH Server and SSH client
- SELinux
- IP Tables
- nmap, tcpdump, wireshark, iptraf, traceroute, etc.
- XEN Hypervisor
- KVM Hypervisor
- virt-viewer, virt-manager
- VNC Server
- Basic X Window System with TWM (Tom’s Window Manager) and XTERM
[Update: 19 March 2011]
The CD contains the additional RPMs. It (the CD) can now be used to install the XEN/KVM Hypervisor, and also to set up virtual machines, running LAMP. All 64 bit architecture. All do-able / installable from a single CD.
- Apache Web Server (with SSL)
- MySQL DB Server
- PHP
- VSFTP Server
- Postfix Mail Server
- xferstats, webalizer, spamassassin, squirrelmail
- sysklogd and rsyslog
Your valuable comments are welcome. Let me know if you find it useful.
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Assalam-o-Alaikum
Kamran bhai I was thinking of something similar. But I was not even near what you have provided.
Thanks a lot for this.
Dear Kamran bhai,
ASALAM-O-ALAIKUM!
Very nice minimal package for Virtualization based machines & environments.
No need to use other unwanted packages in the Virtualization based machines.
You are doing MASHA ALLAH very good job for IT Professionals.
..
Regards,
Babar
Well i must say that i really like your job.
i myself was thinking on doing something like that.
i must say im inspierd.
Assalma-O-Aliakum
Kamran Bhai,
Your really doing very well for Pakistan. tell me can we installed our production servers as vm on cluster front node to use the processing power and memory. Looking for ur early reponse plz.
Regards
Alhumdulillah. Thank you for appreciation.
I could not get your question. It is vague / unclear. Still, if your question about using virtualization for production systems/servers, the answer is, (for most cases), Yes.
Other than the product itself (the CentOS Hypevisor CD) , please ask your questions in the forums. (http://forums.techsnail.com)
Regards,
Kamran