[Opensim-users] OpenSim and Virtual Machines

[Fleep Tuque]

I don't have nearly as much experience or expertise with optimizing OpenSim
as some of the folks who have already posted, but we did a fair bit of
performance testing at UC trying to decide which approach was better, and
in my experience the virtual machine route just didn't perform as well as
running on physical hardware.

For something like a personal sandbox, or a small community grid where you
don't expect much concurrency, it probably would work just fine.  For a
full on grid hosting many projects or people, I personally wouldn't go with
a vm route.

- Chris


Chris M. Collins (Avatar: Fleep Tuque)
Center for Simulations & Virtual Environments Research (UCSIM)
UCIT Research & Development, Innovation & Partnerships
UC Office of Information Technologies
University of Cincinnati
400 University Hall
PO Box 210658
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0658
chris.collins at uc.edu
(513) 556-3018

http://ucsim.uc.edu


On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 6:56 AM, R.Gunther <rigun at rigutech.nl> wrote:

>  Only tried opensim in virtualbox (on windows :O ) with opensuse as guest.
> But the biggest problem i see is the hdd speed. maby not enough cpu
> resources. assigned 2-3 cores.
> But it where a bit more laggy. but linux is not the best choice for
> opensim anyway, so it maby could be mono to.
>
>
> On 2014-02-21 07:37, John Sheridan wrote:
>
> If you're looking to run your own hypervisor I'd suggest something called
> Proxmox.  Its open source / linux based and allows you to create both
> openvz and kvm containers via a nifty web interface.  Their website is
> https://pve.proxmox.com
>
>
> On 02/21/2014 12:24 AM, Dahlia Trimble wrote:
>
>  I've used OpenSimulator in a variety of virtual machines, from KVM to
> OpenVZ to VirtualBox to EC2. In general performance is less than when
> running in bare hardware but everything usually works. I've seen some
> issues with timer accuracy in some virtual machines in the past and had to
> compile a custom linux kernel to get around it, but I think recent
> virtualization technology has probably fixed this. Some technologies like
> OpenVZ I found very difficult to work with in general and I prefer to stick
> with the KVM style approach where the host OS kernel is set up to allow a
> "closer to the metal" virtualization.
>
>  I think virtual machines are good for lower performance installations
> where fewer avatars and scripts are expected. and bare metal should be used
> where higher performance is needed.
>
>  Often hosting companies will oversell and you may get a lot less
> performance than you would expect from their advertised specifications. If
> performance is poor with one company, try others. The cheapest deal is
> usually far from the best.
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Justin Clark-Casey <
> jjustincc at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've seen OpenSimulator run under different virtual machines (Xen and
>> EC2).  Back a few years ago, there was a very odd issue when using EC2
>> where the simulator process wouldn't certain start context switching
>> millions of times and freeze out all other processes, though that may have
>> been a mono issue rather than EC2.
>>
>> Other than that, it appears to work just fine as long as you give it
>> sufficient CPU resources, as is the case when running on bare metal.
>>
>>
>> On 20/02/14 21:19, dogwomble at exemail.com.au wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all
>>>
>>> I wad wondering if anyone had much experience with running OpenSim under
>>> a
>>> virtual machine? I'm interested in finding out what sort of performance
>>> can be expected from running in that sort of environment and how far it
>>> can be pushed without too many issues.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Opensim-users mailing list
>>> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>>>
>>>
>>
>>   --
>> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
>> OSVW Consulting
>> http://justincc.org
>> http://twitter.com/justincc
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>>
>
>
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