Anyone running the JSS in a VM?

[chris_kemp]

Wondering if anyone is using Linux VMs for their JSS, or for other components of the system? If so, how's the performance? Any issues that would indicate it being better served by its own hardware?

[stevewood]

I'm running my JSS and my JDS on Ubuntu 12.0.4 LTS on VMWare 5.5 and I haven't had any performance issues at all. Granted my install base is less than 200 machines, but yeah, no performance issues at all.

[mm2270]

Recent thread that may be of relevance-
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=10163

We run ours in a Windows VM. Can't say the performance for us is spectacular, but I think its just how our VM is set up and the fact that its Windows. From what others are saying, Linux VMs provide better performance, but that's not really an option here.

[ToriAnneke]

I moved from OS X10.6.8 when 9.22 released.

Only the JSS is on Ubuntu. The master DP is on a Xserver so I can still use AFP cause I really don't like SMB with my Macs. Also, I run CarbonCopyCloner on the DP which copies the /CasperShare to a remote Mac as backup.

[chris_kemp]

Yeah, I am probably sticking with Mac Minis for DPs and NetBoot. Seems like the path of least resistance, especially if we move the heavy lifting to a big server.

[Banks]

Pardon to slightly hijack this thread, but:
I'm about to setup a clean installation, and was currently looking at (64-bit)RHEL 6.5 VM(that provides SMBIOS info) with MySQL 5.6, and java(openJDK) 7. I've been warned Java 6 and MySQL 5.5 could be more reliable, but I'm figuring I'll just do whatever's needed to make it work so we can get the current patched/supported version.
I was assuming I won't need to offload the DB to another host when we're only looking at from ~300 to ~1500 clients (likely in ~3 months)this year. I was going to give 80GBs to the VM running the DB and app server, and have it mount whatever shared storage I'd get access to with ~500GBs of space. (I'd likely not use much of it, anyway, since images will be in DeployStudio). I'm not really looking at other distribution points nor the NetBoot appliance yet.
I'd follow the official docs, here: http://resources.jamfsoftware.com/documents/products/documentation/Casper-Suite-9.3-JSS-Installation-Guide-for-Linux.pdf

Questions:
Do the above specs sound about right?
What's the threshold before splitting off the DB from the app server? Clustering? (probably I/O usage? Would Tomcat start hogging too much RAM if we scale up beyond a certain point?)
Any other feedback or thoughts? Thanks, Allister

[safreder]

We moved our JSS from an Xserve to a VM. It has been a learning experience to fine tune the VM to have the functionality that we need. We needed to adjust our policies to not push out software updates is such mass, as the traffic really slowed down the web interface (when trying to login, call up computer objects, etc). From adjusting tomcat memory to being more aware of when we push the updates out (we have only 1500 clients in the JSS), it has gotten much better to work with. One lesson we learned that when the host is updated, it can break your VM. Just make sure you have created a snapshot of your vm prior to any updates. Also make sure you host server has been "snap shotted" so a JAVA update doesn't bring down your service.

[safreder]

We moved our JSS from an Xserve to a VM. It has been a learning experience to fine tune the VM to have the functionality that we need. We needed to adjust our policies to not push out software updates is such mass, as the traffic really slowed down the web interface (when trying to login, call up computer objects, etc). From adjusting tomcat memory to being more aware of when we push the updates out (we have only 1500 clients in the JSS), it has gotten much better to work with. One lesson we learned that when the host is updated, it can break your VM. Just make sure you have created a snapshot of your vm prior to any updates. Also make sure you host server has been "snap shotted" so a JAVA update doesn't bring down your service.

[rsprik]

We had performance problems on a Linux VM and moved to to a Mac Mini server, which made things a lot better.

[Kennedy]

Running 9.3 on Windows Server 2008 R2 on vSphere 5.5 here with no performance issues.

Gav

[ooshnoo]

Same here...

Running on a Windows 2008 R2 server in vSphere...no problems.

[PeterClarke]

Anyone running on Virtualised Ubuntu on ESX ?
or even on Ubuntu generally ?
Is that a better choice then Window-2008 R2 Server ?

- Using a virtualised Ubuntu, is one of the options I am considering, but haven't looked at yet.

We currently run Casper Vn 8.73 on OS X 10.6.8 Virtualised on Parallels, running on Xserve..
- Which we are going to replace this summer.
- The above has worked well, but now has several issues..
-- (1) We need to replace the Xserver, (2) Parallels only supports OS X 10.6.x, (3) which can't run Casper 9..
-- So time for a refresh.. (and hoping the Casper 9 bugs are sorted out by then..)

Whichever way we go, we intend running Virtualised on ESX.
Since this offers us more flexibility.

Another possibility is (New) MacPro, running ESX, with virtualised OS X 10.9..
-- A significant issues there is that ESX is not yet qualified for New MacPro..
We have also considered using MacMini Server, though that's somewhat limited by Max Ram of 16 GB.

It's good to have a choice.. Right now we've yet to decide which platform it's going to run on.
Our earlier policy, was to run all Apple related things on OSX and Apple hardware - which made sense for a while.

Now we are reappraising things for the next refresh..

[tobiaslinder]

We have an environment with 4 MacMini 2012 with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD with vSphere 5.1. We have MySQL and about 30 instances of JSS in a VM with Ubuntu 12.0.4 server and it works great. We're planning on separating the MySQL and Tomcat soon to make it more performant.

[yan1212]

Our entire JSS configuration is running on virtualised Ubuntu Server 12.0.4 on vSphere.

For performance and most importantly redundancy and flexibility reasons we have everything split up into separate VMs: We have a 3-node JSS cluster (master+secondary+dmz), 4 DP's (https/smb),2 x HA proxy load balancers and one VM hosting the DB (will soon be replicating via VEAM for failover).

The above setup would have required a lot of hardware if we wanted to go with OS X server and to be honest we'd have nowhere near the flexibility we have now.

Performance-wise, splitting everything up allows you to be a lot more efficient by allocating resources only where needed while the estate is increasing.

[JPDyson]

We have just over 1000 Macs under management, and we're using a few Windows 2008 VMs. We currently have the database running on a separate system from the web app, but no performance metrics point to that being a necessary step. It's been fine.

This depends largely on your VM infrastructure, and in our case, we are just a drop in a bucket.