[CentOS-virt] OT: Recommendations for a virtual storage server

compdoc compdoc at hotrodpc.com
Wed Feb 2 12:30:56 EST 2011


> I may be wrong on this compdoc, but I'm pretty sure it's a pretty bad idea
to have the host (Dom0 for me, in Xen) doing anything other than hosting the
system for the DomUs.

Thanks for the reply, but someone else asked the question. I use KVM and the
host isn't taxed to the point of needing to be strictly a host. One trick
I've learned: have the OS, VMs, and large storage on separate physical
drives, or it can choke.

This is also what helps facilitate backups and maintenance. For instance I
can remove the OS drive, pop in a new drive and load a new OS and test the
whole thing. If something goes south, I can reinstall the old OS drive and
be up and running in a few minutes. If nothing goes wrong, I just hold the
old drive for a while as backup, then recycle it in a new project at some
point.

By the way, I've tried openfiler in a VM, (citrix zenserver or kvm) as well
as on dedicated hardware. I found it would just stop responding and had to
be rebooted after a few weeks of use. And this was with different versions
of openfiler, since I keep thinking newer versions would fix the problems...





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