Hi! Is it possible to run XEN hypervisor from USB disk (connected to the usb controller)? Let me be more specific... I would like to run dom0 from USB disk and with the help of PCI passthrough, asign the integrated hard disk controller to a specific DomU. The PV guest would run Openfiller or FreeNAS – what would make it a SAN server. Other PV guests running on the same machine would use the shared LUNs of the SAN server. That''s the plan, is it doable? Thanks and have a nice day, Jan _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
2010/5/7 Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si>:> Hi! > > > > Is it possible to run XEN hypervisor from USB disk (connected to the usb > controller)? Let me be more specific... I would like to run dom0 from USB > disk and with the help of PCI passthrough, asign the integrated hard disk > controller to a specific DomU. > > The PV guest would run Openfiller or FreeNAS – what would make it a SAN > server. Other PV guests running on the same machine would use the shared > LUNs of the SAN server. > > That''s the plan, is it doable? > > > > Thanks and have a nice day, > > Jan >yes should work -- ------------ Itamar Reis Peixoto _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
From: Jan.Cescut@kgs.si To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 21:44:39 +0200 Subject: [Xen-users] XEN hypervisor on USB disk Hi! Is it possible to run XEN hypervisor from USB disk (connected to the usb controller)? Let me be more specific... I would like to run dom0 from USB disk and with the help of PCI passthrough, asign the integrated hard disk controller to a specific DomU. The PV guest would run Openfiller or FreeNAS – what would make it a SAN server. Other PV guests running on the same machine would use the shared LUNs of the SAN server. That''s the plan, is it doable? Thanks and have a nice day, Jan I would be interested in reading what steps you took if/when you are successful :) -M _________________________________________________________________ MSN Dating: Find someone special. Start now. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9729707 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
2010/5/8 Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si>:> Hi! > > > > Is it possible to run XEN hypervisor from USB disk (connected to the usb > controller)? Let me be more specific... I would like to run dom0 from USB > disk and with the help of PCI passthrough, asign the integrated hard disk > controller to a specific DomU.Should be possible, as long as whatever dom0 you use supports installing to USB disk.> > The PV guest would run Openfiller or FreeNAS – what would make it a SAN > server. Other PV guests running on the same machine would use the shared > LUNs of the SAN server. > > That''s the plan, is it doable?Before deploying it in production, you should test its performance first. Having a domU handle all I/Os for other domUs (via iscsi/nfs?) might incure performance penalties. Make sure the performance is acceptable for your needs. -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
If I passthrough the disk controller to DomU (running FreeNAS) and then try to share the iSCSI LUNs over virtual network to other DomUs that are running in paravirtual mode, the performance penalty shouldn't be a concern - baised on different I/O benchmarks that I checked on internet (between two HVM guests with installed Xen network drivers and between two PV guests - which performed excellent). I would also like to run a single HVM guest (Windows 2003) which will have it's LUNs shared over dedicated network card that will be passed-through (one in FreeNAS and the other in HVM guest Win2003). Of course if I'm not mistaken. :) Have a nice day, Jan -----Original Message----- From: Fajar A. Nugraha [mailto:fajar@fajar.net] Sent: 10. maj 2010 6:55 To: Jan Češčut Cc: xen-users@lists.xensource.com Subject: Re: [Xen-users] XEN hypervisor on USB disk 2010/5/8 Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si>:> Hi! > > > > Is it possible to run XEN hypervisor from USB disk (connected to the usb > controller)? Let me be more specific... I would like to run dom0 from USB > disk and with the help of PCI passthrough, asign the integrated hard disk > controller to a specific DomU.Should be possible, as long as whatever dom0 you use supports installing to USB disk.> > The PV guest would run Openfiller or FreeNAS – what would make it a SAN > server. Other PV guests running on the same machine would use the shared > LUNs of the SAN server. > > That's the plan, is it doable?Before deploying it in production, you should test its performance first. Having a domU handle all I/Os for other domUs (via iscsi/nfs?) might incure performance penalties. Make sure the performance is acceptable for your needs. -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si> wrote:> If I passthrough the disk controller to DomU (running FreeNAS) and then try to share the iSCSI LUNs over virtual network to other DomUs that are running in paravirtual mode, the performance penalty shouldn''t be a concern - baised on different I/O benchmarks that I checked on internet (between two HVM guests with installed Xen network drivers and between two PV guests - which performed excellent). I would also like to run a single HVM guest (Windows 2003) which will have it''s LUNs shared over dedicated network card that will be passed-through (one in FreeNAS and the other in HVM guest Win2003). > Of course if I''m not mistaken. :)AFAIK there was a discussion about whether to run iscsi client on dom0 and domU, when the storage server was an external host. The conclusion was running it in dom0 and exporting it to domU as block device was faster than importing it on domU directly. So there''s somewhat significant penalty in running iscsi on domU. Then again, if you can live with the penalty, you should be just fine. Make sure to run tests first :D -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Hm, what about running a stubdom? Stubdom relieves dom0 of I/O operations that HVM domain with qemu in userspace imposes. Can it be related somehow to a PV domain with IOMMU enabled? Thanks, Jan -----Original Message----- From: Fajar A. Nugraha [mailto:fajar@fajar.net] Sent: 11. maj 2010 5:45 To: Jan Češčut Cc: xen-users@lists.xensource.com Subject: Re: [Xen-users] XEN hypervisor on USB disk On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si> wrote:> If I passthrough the disk controller to DomU (running FreeNAS) and then try to share the iSCSI LUNs over virtual network to other DomUs that are running in paravirtual mode, the performance penalty shouldn't be a concern - baised on different I/O benchmarks that I checked on internet (between two HVM guests with installed Xen network drivers and between two PV guests - which performed excellent). I would also like to run a single HVM guest (Windows 2003) which will have it's LUNs shared over dedicated network card that will be passed-through (one in FreeNAS and the other in HVM guest Win2003). > Of course if I'm not mistaken. :)AFAIK there was a discussion about whether to run iscsi client on dom0 and domU, when the storage server was an external host. The conclusion was running it in dom0 and exporting it to domU as block device was faster than importing it on domU directly. So there's somewhat significant penalty in running iscsi on domU. Then again, if you can live with the penalty, you should be just fine. Make sure to run tests first :D -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Jan Češčut <Jan.Cescut@kgs.si> wrote:> Hm, what about running a stubdom? Stubdom relieves dom0 of I/O operations that HVM domain with qemu in userspace imposes. Can it be related somehow to a PV domain with IOMMU enabled?PV drivers should perform better than stubdom. Don''t let what I said about performance penalty discourage you though. I''m merely putting some perspective on what to expect. Depends on your needs and setup, it''s possible that you won''t notice the performance penalty :D -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users