Hi,
Up until now my main production server has been a "bare metal" installation of
CentOS 7.9 hosting a variety of stuff.
* DNS server with BIND for eight domains
* IMAP mail server with Postfix and Dovecot for these domains, with about two
dozen mail accounts
* Webmail with Roundcube for all the mail accounts
* Various WordPress-based websites and blogs
* Several instances of the management software Dolibarr
* The learning platform GEPI for our local school
* One instance of OwnCloud for half a dozen users
The hardware has no problems to deal with all that performance-wise. But
managing all this in one big bulk has become a bit of a problem, since the
LAMP-based PHP applications (WordPress, Dolibarr, GEPI, OwnCloud) increasingly
cultivate their idiosyncrasies, so this feels more and more like herding cats.
My main goal in migrating all this stuff preogressively to a series of neat VMs
hosted on a KVM hypervisor is clarity and ease of maintenance.
Now I wonder what could be a smart subdivision of all these VMs. After a bit of
brainstorming, here's what I can come up with.
1. It would make sense to regroup all the applications, e. g. one VM for all
the Dolibarr hostings, and then a different VM for WordPress, and a third VM
for OwnCloud.
2. It's tempting to have a lot of small VMs for clarity's sake. On the other
hand, it's maybe better to have one single VM for all the mail stuff.
3. Should I put all the Roundcube instances in a separate VM? Or does that go
with the Postfix/Dovecot mail VM?
4. DNS is a bit of a special case, a bit of a catch 22. I would be tempted to
setup an extra (bare-metal) machine for just handling this. Since BIND provides
the DNS information about the hypervisor and the backup server themselves this
becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
5. Even if it's tempting to multiply VMs, let's not forget that I have to keep
an eye on hardware resources, not to forget I have to pay for every extra IPv4
address.
I'd be curious to have your input, since I'm fairly new to this sort of approach.
Cheers,
Niki
--
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