JSS on Windows2008 VM or Linux RH6 VM?

[Cem]

Hi all,

I have an option to move my JSS servers to 2 x Windows2008 VM or 2 x Linux RH6 VM? I will be using Clustering too (thats why I have put 2 x)

I would like your opinion, which one I should go for?

Are you using any of the above VM Servers and any issues I should be aware off?

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!

[jhbush]

It really depends on your comfort level with each OS. I'm more comfortable with Unix based operating systems, but running the jss on Windows has worked just fine in my lab testing. Windows would allow you to make use of robocopy for replication and DFS for fileshares. Linux is free and easy to use, and more secure in my experience. I would attend the CJA course and then make a decision.

[donmontalvo]

We didn't really have a choice since we wanted to hand off responbility of the VMs to our datacenter team. They fully support Windows Server 2008, including keeping tabs on services, backups, etc. If we went with Linux there would have been fewer staff to support it so the PITA factor would have gone up. YMMV.

I'm not a Windows guy, but I'm curious, isn't DFS an option for replicating shares? Our guru explained in a meeting that if DFS is enabled, we can upload to the master and replication would happen automagically.

I would go into how Robocopy didn't cut it for us, but not sure if any of you have a replication time window imposed on you by the network team. So where Robocopy would be in the middle of a file copy and the window closes, the copy would stop and corrupt the file. DFS is somehow supposed to handle that better. Wintel stuff is greek to me, just going by what I was told by Wintel geeks in a management meeting. :)

Either way, it's a great feeling drop kicking Apple hardware out of the server side of things. LOL

Don

[Cem]

@jhbush1973; CJA is not available in UK :(

@donmontalvo; our environment is very similar to yours. Great info! I can't wait to off load the server support part. Apple Servers always being an alien to data center guys, even KVM didn't work!

So thanks for the replies. I am glad to hear that Win2008 have no issues running the JSS.

[tkimpton]

Thanks for letting us know. I've been meaning to test it out but hadn't got round to it yet.

[tlarkin]

Hey Everyone,

The JSS is a complete "choose your own adventure," solution. It just requires Tomcat, MySQL and Java. Which all three of those pretty much run on every OS out there.

As for the JSS and distribution points, my opinion (this is my personal opinion here) is that visualization is the way to go. That is, if you are able to. I would prefer to work with Linux based servers personally, that is mainly because I prefer command line and config files over GUI based preference menus and the registry. That is just an opinion of mine, not fact by any means.

That being said, I love the idea of creating some 'zero state,' virtual machines. Then deploying them where ever you need them. You need a new DP in a remote office, just deploy your zero state VM and then configure it with proper IP/DNS and synchronize it. Once you build it, it would be easy to update and deploy. If you maintain the VM and keep it up to date as well, you can easily spin it up else where.

That being said, I have set up plenty of Windows JSS instances and I haven't encountered anything that would tell me it doesn't work. So, you will have to use what you prefer and what works best in your environment.

Thanks,
Tom

[Lincoln]

Hi Tom,

I agree on the virtualization front. Our JSS has been running on a Hyper-V VM since day one (October last year, I'm a new boy) without a hitch. As it happens we are using Windows 2008 r2 for all our hosts and VMs though as noted in the NetSUS Appliance thread we may yet see about getting a Linux VM up for this role.

Virtualization has made our (IT staff) lives much easier in terms of just about every task I can think of.

Regards

Lincoln

[Kumarasinghe]

Hi Tom and Lincoln,

As both of you guys are highly experienced in JSS back-end stuff;

1. What would be the recommended VM specs for 4000 clients (with growth up to 10,000+ clients in 2 years)?
2. How many JSS VMs (cluster) you might think to handle 4000 clients with below specs?

Our standard VMs are; Windows Server 2008 R2 2x CPU cores 4GB RAM

MySQL and Distribution Points are on different servers.

Please give us a rough indication about the JSS server specs (if above specs are not sufficient) and cluster (how many VMs) for our setup.

Thanks.
Thusitha

[tlarkin]

Hey Thusitha,

Would these be iOS clients or OS X clients? iOS is very light weight and takes up exponentially less resources.

If you could give the community a run down of your environment I am sure we could all toss a couple thoughts your way.

Thanks,
Tom

[Kumarasinghe]

All OS X clients no iOS yet.

Our environment is going to be;

JSS on VMs with public access available (will be clustered setup)
Distribution Points with HTTPS enabled for Self Service to connect client machines from outside our domain.
MySQL database hosted on MySQL HA setup.
OS X 10.7+ clients (~4000)