I was recently showing someone my homelab and they noticed that I had templates for multiple Linux distributions including Ubuntu Server, Photon OS, and Tiny Core, as well as different versions of each. They asked why I didn’t standardize on just one Linux distribution or version. The version issue is easy — I can be lazy when it comes to cleaning up old templates. The reason for multiple distributions required a bit of extra explanation, so I figured I would type it up here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tiny Core is a very small Linux distribution that I can clone in seconds. If I want to test something like network connectivity, a new DHCP scope, scripting something against a handful of VMs, or something that deals with the disk of a VM like vSphere Replication or a VM image backup\/restore Tiny Core is perfect… just enough of a VM to get the job done. Instructions on how to create such a template can be found in this previous post: https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/lab-infrastructure\/lightweight-vm-for-testing-tinycore-linux\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photon OS is a minimal Linux distribution optimized to run on VMware platforms. Its already available as an OVA here: https:\/\/github.com\/vmware\/photon\/wiki\/Downloading-Photon-OS<\/a>, so I just imported it once and saved it as a template. It only takes a couple minutes to deploy one of these and configure it to run Docker containers. For an example of something you can use it for, check out this previous post https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/scripting\/vrealize-operations-alerts-using-rest-notification-plugin\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ubuntu Server is the largest Linux template I have on disk, but is still relatively small compared to a Windows template (my configured Ubuntu Server 18.04 template is ~5GB). Ubuntu is a consumer friendly distribution with current support for a lot of different packages. I have one of these VMs running PiHole and another used as a 2FA\/RADIUS server that I use for Two Factor Authentication with Horizon UAG. Here is a previous post for building an Ubuntu 18.04 template: https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/virtualization\/lab-updates-ubuntu-18-04-template\/<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n What Linux distribution do you like that I am missing? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was recently showing someone my homelab and they noticed that I had templates for multiple Linux distributions including Ubuntu Server, Photon OS, and Tiny Core, as well as different versions of each. They asked why I didn’t standardize on … Continue reading