The weird thing to me about the majority of VMware environments I see is that they exist to prop up and extend Microsoft environments.
Microsoft is hostile towards this use case because having your own cloud competes with their cloud products.
VMware was a commodity product that exists because they know how desperately IT professionals need to keep these Windows systems running with some level of reliability with advanced backup and replication strategies. And it was good.
After trying out proxmox I can say that:
VM performance under windows is much faster on vmware. I think this boils down to the drivers for storage. I could go more into detail but not here.
Containers and Linux VMs are offering me more than I ever really hoped for in proxmox.
But now I’m starting to think what the alternatives are really. VMware was a windows first virtualization platform. Other virtualization platforms in the open source ecosystem really put things like Linux first.
Having to race to get to the point of hosting windows systems with constantly increasing licensing prices has really diminished the value to me of virtualization over all for windows.
I think we as a community need to move away from windows on the server and embrace technologies like containers,docker,podman, Kubernetes and phase out reliance on Windows.
For starters, does anybody have a rock solid setup guide for a Kubernetes Active Directory System?
Yeeahh… I’m thinking (hoping) he means an alternative LDAP/IDP, like Keycloak or Authentik…? Wanting to reduce reliance on Windows = kicking AD to the curb, too.
The problem with Samba AD in a container or Samba in container is that Samba isn’t designed to be run in a temporary environment. You could run it in a LXC container but anything beyond that will break things in the short or long term.
I figured you could get around some of the storage limitations with something like persistent volume claims. I’m testing it out at the moment. I am a big fan of LXC.
I see a few people have created docker Samba Containers and I’m giving them a whirl. Can’t say much for stability but I think it’s an interesting experiment.
I know in the past smb server didn’t work in LXC containers because certain kernel modules caused conflicts.
If you manage to create persistent containers how are you going to update them down the road? Like I have said previously, Samba isn’t designed in a way that allows for effectively hot swapping system components.
It seems like it would better to create a VM template and then setup a fail over cluster. Just make sure you have a time server somewhere on the network.
If you are dead set on containers you could try LDAP in a container. I just don’t think active directory was built for Linux containerization.
There are a few applications out there that I don’t fully understand the deployment of but seem to work in containers.
Typically the storage is mounted outside of the container and passed through in the compose file for docker. This allows your data to be persistent. Ideally you would also want those to reside in a file system that can easily be snapshot like ZFS. When you pull down a new docker container, it should just remount the same location and begin to run.
Or at least that’s how I’d imagine it would run. I feel like one would run into the same challenges people have running databases persistently in containers.
The weird thing to me about the majority of VMware environments I see is that they exist to prop up and extend Microsoft environments.
Microsoft is hostile towards this use case because having your own cloud competes with their cloud products.
VMware was a commodity product that exists because they know how desperately IT professionals need to keep these Windows systems running with some level of reliability with advanced backup and replication strategies. And it was good.
After trying out proxmox I can say that:
But now I’m starting to think what the alternatives are really. VMware was a windows first virtualization platform. Other virtualization platforms in the open source ecosystem really put things like Linux first. Having to race to get to the point of hosting windows systems with constantly increasing licensing prices has really diminished the value to me of virtualization over all for windows.
I think we as a community need to move away from windows on the server and embrace technologies like containers,docker,podman, Kubernetes and phase out reliance on Windows.
For starters, does anybody have a rock solid setup guide for a Kubernetes Active Directory System?
Active directory doesn’t normally go with Kubernetes. What are you asking?
Yeeahh… I’m thinking (hoping) he means an alternative LDAP/IDP, like Keycloak or Authentik…? Wanting to reduce reliance on Windows = kicking AD to the curb, too.
I’m also interested in these alternatives!
There is Samba AD but that will very much not run in kubernetes
I’m fooling around with a few samba AD docker containers. I ask because I’ve phased almost everything else out of my lab environment.
The problem with Samba AD in a container or Samba in container is that Samba isn’t designed to be run in a temporary environment. You could run it in a LXC container but anything beyond that will break things in the short or long term.
I figured you could get around some of the storage limitations with something like persistent volume claims. I’m testing it out at the moment. I am a big fan of LXC.
I see a few people have created docker Samba Containers and I’m giving them a whirl. Can’t say much for stability but I think it’s an interesting experiment.
I know in the past smb server didn’t work in LXC containers because certain kernel modules caused conflicts.
A man can dream.
If you manage to create persistent containers how are you going to update them down the road? Like I have said previously, Samba isn’t designed in a way that allows for effectively hot swapping system components.
It seems like it would better to create a VM template and then setup a fail over cluster. Just make sure you have a time server somewhere on the network.
If you are dead set on containers you could try LDAP in a container. I just don’t think active directory was built for Linux containerization.
There are a few applications out there that I don’t fully understand the deployment of but seem to work in containers.
Typically the storage is mounted outside of the container and passed through in the compose file for docker. This allows your data to be persistent. Ideally you would also want those to reside in a file system that can easily be snapshot like ZFS. When you pull down a new docker container, it should just remount the same location and begin to run.
Or at least that’s how I’d imagine it would run. I feel like one would run into the same challenges people have running databases persistently in containers.