FAH as a VMware Appliance

[mroesler]

Has there been any thought to developing a VMware Appliance version of FAH?

I know, you're going to say that FAH is a CPU intensive application that doesn't benefit from or bode well for virtual machines. But here's my thinking. I do a lot of work with virtual servers for large (usually Fortune 50) customers and I also always seem to have some of my own virtual server hosts running for various projects. If I want to run FAH on one of these servers for a while while it's not all that busy, I need to install FAH, move an existing work folder over to it... then when I want to re-purpose that physical server, I have to deinstall FAH, grab my work folder off it, and save it somewhere til I can reinstall it on another server.

So I thought about creating a very small (probably something tiny like DSL, meaning "Damn Small Linux") VM, installing FAH into it, and letting it rip. I can simply move that virtual aplliance around to any server, any time, and it just goes. No installing, no moving work folders. No WUs sitting idle waiting for me to have time to install and move. There have to be A LOT of corporate IT managers here that would feel much more comfortable running FAH if was packaged in the containment and total control of a VMware appliance. And some of these IT managers have hundreds, or thousands of VM hosts at their disposal. (I recently finished a project moving 18,000 physical servers onto 18,000 virtual servers and during this project I had, at times, over 2,000 quad-Xeon servers sitting idle for weeks or months with VMware installed, but awaiting virtual machines.)

And there's more beauty to this... I can set up parameters in VMware ESX so that the CPU cycles available to the specific VM running FAH can be throttled up or down by time of day, system load, etc. Wait, there's more... I use vmotion, so my VMware hypervisor can autonomously move the appliance from a heavier-loaded host server to a lighter one without even shutting FAH down. And all with no user intervention. (if you have never seen a demo of vmotion moving a live, running virtual server from one physical server to another without interrupting users for a millisecond, it is unbelievable, but it works flawlessly.)

So, before I put the work into gen'ing up an FAH VMware Appliance I wanted to see if anyone else has done one yet.

-MR

[EvilAlchemist]

Already been done my friend ..

Download and enjoy

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

[mroesler]

Sweet! Works great on VM workstation or player.

Now, just to be obstinate and high-maintenance... I want to be able to run this on a number of ESX and ESXi servers, and the quickest way to do that is to make the VM a true VMware appliance, which puts it in a .ovf file. I run the VM through VMware converter and it gives me the kibash, saying "guest operating system not recognized." (ESX is a little pickier than workstation about knwing what's going on inside the VM.) Has anyone converted this or gotten Reilly's VM to run on ESXi?

[EvilAlchemist]

Sweet! Works great on VM workstation or player.

Now, just to be obstinate and high-maintenance... I want to be able to run this on a number of ESX and ESXi servers, and the quickest way to do that is to make the VM a true VMware appliance, which puts it in a .ovf file. I run the VM through VMware converter and it gives me the kibash, saying "guest operating system not recognized." (ESX is a little pickier than workstation about knwing what's going on inside the VM.) Has anyone converted this or gotten Reilly's VM to run on ESXi?

To be honest, I am not really sure.
NotFred is the author of that Folding@Home disto. He is very well versed in *nix systems, but I am not sure about his knowledge in VMware and ESX systems.

You can try and shoot him a PM on this forum, or go to his home forum over at the TechReport.