Stability of OD in virtualized environments

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asceticwonder
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Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by asceticwonder » Sat Feb 03, 2018 4:23 am

Hello OD world,

I am in the process of setting up OD to be used by a new office. I'm running OD in Virtualbox and a few days ago I got several crashes from simple activities like clearing the pinboard or added a procedure which were not reproducible. Given that I havent rolled out OD yet, these crashes worry me a little bit. I have no clue why they happened, maybe it's my virtual machine setup, maybe it's the Windows guest setup, or maybe it's just OD?

Can anyone comment on the use of OD in virtualized environments. Experiences in running OD (both server and client) in Virtualbox, VMWare, or Windows in-built virtual machines?

Thanks!

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Justin Shafer
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by Justin Shafer » Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:28 am

It should just work. Maybe you have some hardware issues, don't know. Virtual environments should be the same as a physical environment.

bpcomp
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by bpcomp » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:58 pm

We've been running the server and workstations in our office as virtual machines with VMware Workstation and Player for 5 or 6 years. We run Linux as a host and Windows as the guest. The specific virtualization issues I've had have been problems with USB based xrays working in the VM. Those were hit or miss and I ended up not using a virtual machine for the 2 workstations that we needed to use our USB xray sensor on. The other issue I had related to VM was a sound issue. This didn't effect us much because we didn't need any audio on the machines that were having problems.

The benefits have far outweighed the drawbacks. When a workstation goes down I pull a spare workstation that we have already configured with Linux and VMware player. I copy the virtual machine over the network and boot it up. Do any updates that need to be done since the VM was last backed up and the machine is ready to go with domain, printers, software, everything. We make a clone of the server VM every night and it is copied to a backup server and then copied to an encrypted external drive to be taken off site. It would be almost impossible for the crypto virus to take us out because all the backup is in Linux and the Windows file system can't talk to it. If there is a problem with the server hardware, I can boot the server VM on the backup server and the domain will pick right back up and everything in the office will continue working.

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Justin Shafer
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by Justin Shafer » Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:22 pm

Yeah.. I would like to add that VMWare has the best Direct3d compatibility.. VirtualBox does not. If you want to use VMR9 Rendering with a IntraOral Camera... Go with VMWare... VirtualBox has Direct3d, but it is still experimental and honestly.. I can't use VirtualBox when I test my camera plugin.

Good post bpcomp.

asceticwonder
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by asceticwonder » Wed Feb 07, 2018 9:26 am

Thanks guys...

This is very good to know, that's why I wanted to implement VMs. We are pediatric so we will not have much use for intraoral camera so no concern on that front for now.

We're a small office so I'm not implementing a domain controller or active directory or any of that good stuff.

bpcomp, what do you mean the windows file system can't talk to Linux? For simplicity sake I chose to use this thing called "bridged" mode where the virtual machine appears as its own machine with its on IP address on the network because I didn't want to have to mess around too much in case I wanted to perform other network functions on the windows guest running the open dental server. Are you saying you are running your open dental server in what I have as "NAT" mode where the host provides internet only and I can individual forward ports as needed to the guest?? My concern is that if I run in "NAT mode" it will make it difficult for me to implement windows file sharing that allows the workstations in the office to access the OD server/windows guest's images folder. How do you handle images folder? (I am considering the SFTP server images folder implementation, but I'm scared of straying too far from the herd.)

You are ok with daily clones? You are prepared to deal with a day's loss of data? I am testing some batch processes with mysqldump and binary log files to try to make real-time backup of the data a reality. Am I off-topic?

bpcomp
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by bpcomp » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:43 pm

Lots of good questions. When I say that Windows can't talk to Linux, I don't mean networking, I mean file systems. Unless you install something in windows to allow it to read an EXT4 file system, then Windows can not natively read a Linux hard disk. If the disk can not be read by Windows, it can not be encrypted by Windows crypto virus. You could set up SMB in Linux which makes a Windows compatible network share. If Windows can read and write to the drive, then it can encrypt it. I do not have SMB setup as I have no need.

We have the images folder in our Windows Server 2008r2 VM. Unless you have a pressing need to move it outside of Windows, then I wouldn't.

We are currently setup where we could lose 1 day of data. Mysqldump seems to me to be the best option to limit the amount of data lost. The thing I keep getting hung up on is that I could have an hourly or 15 min cycle to capture the OD data, but there doesn't seem to be a clean solution for capturing our Patterson Imaging data. I suppose it's not the end of the world to capture practice management but not xrays every hour but I keep wanting a solution that works for both. If you are OK with only getting OD backed up continuously and want that data to move offsite, OpenDental recommends http://opendental.centraldatastorage.com. They are HIPPA compliant and will sign a BSA. I've spoken to them and they can do regular backups throughout the day for Open Dental but not Patterson Imaging. I didn't ask about other imaging platforms but I suspect you'd get a similar answer.

You are on topic and moving in a good direction.
Oh and we also are setup in Bridged mode for our VMs

teethdood
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by teethdood » Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:58 pm

I'm running a windows server instance in Virtualbox. The workstations all run windows natively. The virtualized server is a glorified server hosting opendental msql, CBCT, intra oral scanner, file sharing. I don't touch it at all! It is super stable in a production environment since 2010. The virtualized server is encrypted and requires a boot up password to run so it meets HIPPAA requirements when transporting a backup of it in a portable HDD. All other workstation computers run windows natively and are not virtualized.
Your instability probably stems from you running virtualized workstations as well. USB devices don't get handed off from the host to the guest very gracefully at times, causing issues.
Philip H. Doan, DDS
http://www.kaweahdental.com/

bpcomp
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by bpcomp » Tue Feb 13, 2018 6:27 am

Totally agree about the USB stability. The main reason I virtualize the workstations is that it makes recovery SO much easier and faster. If I can copy the VM over the network and then boot with domain joined and everything fully configured, I can have any workstation in the office back up and running within 30min to an hour.

stjames70
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by stjames70 » Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:34 pm

USB stability has not been a serious issues for us. We use vintage 2009 iMacs with VMWare Fusion, so we are running Windows 8 on top of the Mac OS X environment. We have been doing this since 2009 -- Dexis, intraoral cameras, have no difficulty interfacing with OD when connecting them through USB. Love if for all the aforementioned reasons (your Windows system crashes, just copy a 'gold master' Windows machine to the affected computer and voila, you are ready to go in about 30 minutes (average time to copy a VM from our server and reload it into the affected workstation). I should also point out that even our Windows Server 2012 R2 is virtualized on a MacPro 2008 8-core Xeon machine. It runs like a champ and I never touch the server.

bpcomp
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Re: Stability of OD in virtualized environments

Post by bpcomp » Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:06 pm

Yeah, we have no issue with our USB intraoral cameras, it's the Schick USB sensor that gives us problems.

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