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Server Virtualization Systems

VIRCL: BTS Cloud Computing

School

Project Overview

In the VIRCL (Virtualization in the Cloud) module, we deployed and compared two industry-standard Type 1 hypervisors, Proxmox VE and VMware ESXi, on real HP server hardware in the school server room. Starting from bare-metal installation via ILO remote management, we covered the full lifecycle of virtual machines: creation via GUI and CLI, hardware configuration, cloning, snapshots, templates, backups, storage migration, and live hypervisor migration. Our specialisation topic is High Availability (HA).

Team

  • Würth Eric
  • Simon Max
  • Kugener Sven
Download Documentation

Hypervisors Used

  • Proxmox VE: open-source Linux-based hypervisor (KVM + LXC), free to use, managed via a web UI and command line. Installed on HP09.
  • VMware ESXi: industry-leading commercial Type 1 hypervisor by Broadcom, managed via the vSphere Client and vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). Installed on HP11/HP12.

What We Implemented

  • Hypervisor Installation: Remote deployment via ILO5 HTML5 console; network configuration (static IP, gateway, DNS)
  • VM Creation (GUI & CLI): Creating VMs through the web interface and via qm create (Proxmox) / vmkfstools + vim-cmd (ESXi)
  • OS Installation: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Linux server) and Windows 10/11 within VMs on both hypervisors
  • Hardware Changes: Adding/removing CPU cores, RAM, hard disks and NICs; live hot-plug of CPU/RAM where supported
  • Clone / Duplicate: Cloning VMs via GUI (Proxmox right-click Clone; vSphere Clone wizard) and by manually copying .vmdk/.vmx files on ESXi
  • Export: Exporting VMs as OVF/OVA (ESXi) and vzdump archives (Proxmox)
  • Hypervisor Config Backup: tar czf proxmox-config-backup.tar.gz /etc/pve/ on Proxmox; vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config on ESXi
  • VM Backup: Built-in scheduled backup jobs (Proxmox Datacenter → Backup); ghettoVCB script-based backup on ESXi Free
  • Snapshots: Create / rollback / delete snapshots on both platforms
  • VM Templates: Convert to template (Proxmox right-click; ESXi Template menu); manual VMDK clone + VMX edit workaround on ESXi Free
  • Remote Storage (CLOIF2 NAS): Connected TrueNAS via NFS (Proxmox) and iSCSI (ESXi); used as shared datastore for VM files
  • Storage Migration: Live move of VM disks from local storage to NFS/iSCSI datastore while VM is running
  • Hypervisor Migration (vMotion / Proxmox Migrate): Live migration of running VMs between two hypervisor nodes using shared iSCSI storage
  • User & Permission Management: Proxmox datacenter users + roles; vCenter SSO users, custom roles, and ACL propagation
  • Patching: ESXi compliance check via vSphere Lifecycle Manager; host reported Compliant against Critical Host Patches baseline
  • High Availability (Specialisation): vSphere HA cluster with two ESXi hosts, shared iSCSI storage, heartbeat datastores, admission control and failure response policies configured

Video Tutorials

Proxmox VE

VMware ESXi