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I'm starting to look into KVM for virtualization because I can't afford vSphere. I'm "OK" at command line and use it often but no pro. I prefer a GUI, but for a server bare minimum has always been the go to for security and server resources.

  1. As of today, has anything changed at all?

  2. I want to use CentOS 7 with a GUI, how much more server resources could it possibly use? Still more vulnerabilities? Lets say I have 32gb ram and 8 core cpu.

  3. Can I possibly turn off/disable GUI for when I don't need it?

The reason I ask all this is because KVM, I'd much rather see the graphical interface than do everything via command line.

Darius
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  • vSphere isn't necessarily expensive. What are you trying to do? – ewwhite Jan 22 '17 at 22:20
  • Setup an email server, database server, and an NAS/Storage Server, so when it comes time to add hardware, it would be easier to expand (If the information I read before is correct, this is the first step [virtualization]). – Darius Jan 22 '17 at 22:23
  • ESXi is free. You're working off of bad information. – ewwhite Jan 22 '17 at 22:43

1 Answers1

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  1. What?
  2. Don't use a full blown DE. All you would need is virt-manager and it's dependencies (which are sadly a lot) and X11 forwarding, maybe with some X accelerator (e.g. Xrdp) to make it more bearable over a remote connection. It can even run without any GUI on the server if you connect your local virt-manager to the host. This way, you don't need any GUI component on the server.
  3. The GUI (virt-manager) only runs when you need it. If you have a full X11 session with Xrdp, you can turn it off when you don't need it.
  4. As @ewwhite said, vSphere is not necessarily expensive. A single host is even free.
Sven
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