[lug] duping minimal vm question

[Rob Nagler]

On 6/3/10, karl horlen wrote:
>  - what's the best way to install a minimal centos install on a "master" client / guest vm?

Uncheck all the boxes in the software section.  We do this, and then
apply packages on an as needed basis.   I would do this, create the vm
as "minimal", and then see what your clients actually need.

>  - once i have that master guest, is it possible to simply use it to dup multiple future guests based on teh master?  if so, how easy is it?

I'm personally not a big fan of VMs. :)  Do your clients need to login
to your server?  Or, are you managing the applications and data for
them?  We manage quite a few (10ish) applications (some significant)
on our servers with multiple apache instances for the backends and a
single front end.  The advantage of this is that we don't have the
overhead of the VM itself (and get more clients per machine), nor the
VM management, which can be cumbersome.  It requires a lot of
discipline, but we actually know what's on every one of our machines,
and we know how to back them up/reproduce the applications on other
machines.  This is particularly important for archives (having been in
a number of lawsuits lately, recreating apps from archives has been a
real issue for us).

Rob