While I am quite satisfied with the results I've had with my LAN, there
are several areas where I would like to make improvements.
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The Problem
While the results with my LAN have been good so far, it currently
relies on two computers to function correctly. I would like to reduce
this to one machine. While multiple machines can make a system more
reliable, there is little benefit unless the system as a whole can
tolerate the failure of individual machines. With my current setup,
this is not the case. Moreover, a single well-supported machine
is less of a maintenance headache than a cluster of salvaged
ones.
I want to keep things simple, and this precludes adding more
machines, so the next best solution is to reduce the number of
machines to one, and then set that machine up to be as reliable as
possible (eg RAID, service contract, etc).
Hurdles
The main problem with this is that no one OS can handle all my
network needs. In particular, the power and expressiveness of the PF
firewall is unmatched on Linux.
Solutions
The obvious solution to this is virtualization, and there are a
number of options for this. I ruled out VMWare because support is not
sufficiently good on my OS of choice (Ubuntu). It is supported, but
support for new versions is not added quickly enough. While I cannot
blame VMWare for this, I do want to track new versions of Ubuntu as
they are released because they almost always include features I
appreciate.
The next choice for virtualization would be Xen. There are two
objections to this, one trivial and the other not. The first is that
OpenBSD does not support Xen's paravirtualization, and this is easily
overcome for those fortunate enough to have a CPU that supports
hardware virtualization. The second is that Xen's Ubuntu support,
like VMWare, is troublesome.
Fortunately, a third option has become available recently that
negates both problems. KVM is an interface that has been added to the
Linux kernel that supports hardware virtualization, and since it is
part of the mainline kernel now, robust support is easy for distros
to maintain. The next release of Ubuntu, 7.04, is scheduled to be
released in April and supports KVM.
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