[CentOS] openfiler (was: using CentOS as an iSCSI server?)

[nate]

Alan McKay wrote:

> This may seem redundant vs just doing it without openfiler, but as
> mentioned a lot of the fancy features you only get with virtualized
> disk.

Doing that for the most part defeats the purpose of using things
like Vmotion in the first place, that is being able to evacuate
a system to perform hardware/software maintenance on it.

Myself I have 12 vSphere ESXi systems deployed at remote sites
using local storage, they run web servers mostly, and are
redundant, so I don't need things like vMotion. Local storage
certainly does restrict flexibility.

Over complicating things is likely to do more harm than good,
and you'll likely regret going down that path at some point so
save your self some trouble and don't try. Get a real storage
system or build a real storage system to do that kind of thing.

Cheap ones include(won't vouch for any of them personally)
http://www.infortrend.com/
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/storage/disk_storage/msa_diskarrays/index.html
http://www.xyratex.com/Products/storage-systems/raid.aspx

Or build/buy a system to run openfiler. At my last company I
had a quad proc system running a few HP MSA shelves that ran
openfiler. Though the software upgrade process for openfiler
was so scary I never upgraded it. And more than one kernel
at the time paniced at boot. I'm sure it's improved since then
(2 years ago).

nate