VM networking

[saeed12345]

Hey everyone.
Recently I built a small FreeNAS server for a my friend's small company(like 5 people) ... later he asked if I could run a Windows server 2012 VM to be the host of their office automation app.
Now my question is that
1.how transparent the VM would be on the network? Will the "automation app" clients easily communicate with the server?
2.would the remote desktop work through the internet on a FreeNAS VM? (teamviewer or the Windows remote desktop feature itself-the office app people need to do some configurations through the internet-)
3.can you control the VM via a VNC ap through the internet?
The thing is the server is installed and I have to go there and set up the VM and come back. Therefore I cant really do many experiments right now so I want to be sure before I go there.
Sorry for the noob questions looking forward to the answers though.

 

[Nick2253]

You could do this, in theory, but I would strongly recommend against it.

You can buy an old workstation or server from eBay that will function perfectly well as a hypervisor. And you can even use Hyper-V if you want to keep your hypervisor in the Microsoft ecosystem. The Windows Server license will cost at least twice over what you really need to spend for something second-hand.

 

[saeed12345]

You could do this, in theory, but I would strongly recommend against it.

You can buy an old workstation or server from eBay that will function perfectly well as a hypervisor. And you can even use Hyper-V if you want to keep your hypervisor in the Microsoft ecosystem. The Windows Server license will cost at least twice over what you really need to spend for something second-hand.

i appreciate the answer but could you elaborate more on why you recommend against doing that...
also do note the "automation app"really doesn't do much from what i gathered,its seems more of a - send sms to this guy,send email to that other one cause the x is missing in their papers and etc- ...
he does have a licence already + he is strongly against buying second hand(you really cant convince him) ...

 

[Nick2253]

If he's against second hand, then I'd suggest a new server. You can get brand new servers from Dell pretty inexpensively. However, I'd take this as an opportunity to educate your friend about the benefits of second hand. In particular, the performance delta between Sandy Bridge and current CPUs is very small, whereas Sandy Bridge hardware can be had at hugely steep discounts over the current generation. With a business size of "like 5 people", you're really not looking at huge processing demands anyway. I would think the business case for second hand would make itself.

I recommend against putting the VM on FreeNAS for a couple reason:

1. VMs on FreeNAS use a ton of memory. Unlike a jail, you have to allocate all that memory up front. Windows in particular uses a lot of memory, and I'm going to guess that this "automation app" won't work on Server Core, so you're looking at a full Windows Server memory footprint.
   
2. A NAS is typically one of the most mission-critical pieces of hardware on a network. It's purpose is to securely store and serve that data. Hyper-converging additional roles on your NAS hardware undermines that purpose, and can put your data at risk. It increases the attack surface of the box, takes away resources from your NAS, and can add possible instability. In a home environment, these may be acceptable, but I wouldn't think these are acceptable for a business, especially when 60% of small businesses close within 6 months after data loss.
3. The bhyve platform used in FreeNAS isn't exactly what I would call business-class stable. It's relatively new to the world of hypervisors, and it's not really used outside of a few FreeBSD projects like FreeNAS. I'm sure there are some companies that are using bhyve in operation, but I would assume they are largely FreeBSD shops with the expertise to troubleshoot and correct issues. If you check through the FreeNAS forums, you can see people having issues with Windows VMs in particular on bhyve.
   
4. Maintaining hyper-converged systems are more difficult. FreeNAS in particular has had some teething issues with the VMs (the switch from VirtualBox to bhyve). In the future, what happens if FreeNAS decides to go a different direction? Since FreeNAS is first-and-foremost a NAS product, I would bet dollars-to-donuts that the NAS capability will remain, and backwards compatibility will be preserved. However, that won't be guaranteed for plugins/VMs. Already, we have seen a lot of changes in the plugins and VM side, and the continuity support is lacking. In the enterprise world, where (again) data security is paramount, I wouldn't bolt on extra capacity, especially if that might mean I can't upgrade my NAS side for security bugs because it will break the plugin/VM side.

Hyper-V is a top-tier hypervisor that is designed specifically for this purpose. It also provides proper remote support tools, deployment tools, etc. for these use cases. Even if the only use case for this system right now is this one "automation app", I would wager that additional features will be needed before too long. Depending on exactly what the business is, it might make sense to move to AD, deploy an internal Wiki, host their own cloud (NextCloud), etc. Understand that I'm not advocating IT for the sake of IT; everything should have a business case. My point is that, even if there is no other purpose, the business case is there to set it up in a separate box. The marginal cost to deploy a hypervisor instead of bare metal is pretty small, and it gives you a ton of extra capacity.