CentOS virt - Jul 2013 - KVM virtual machine and SAN storage with FC

Hi Team,

Is there any body got any experience on setting up a virtualized environment in
which the vm's can access a fiber channel SAN storage connected to host? the
host access the SAN through its own HBA, but the hba is not recognized inside
the virtual machines. Please let me know the step to go through this.


Regards
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On 03/07/13 15:22, denis bahati wrote:
> Is there any body got any experience on setting up a virtualized
environment in which
> the vm's can access a fiber channel SAN storage connected to host? the
host access the
> SAN through its own HBA, but the hba is not recognized inside the virtual
machines.
> Please let me know the step to go through this.
How you use this storage depends on whether you plan to do migration from one
server to
another.

If you're not going to be migrating then you can just allocate the FC LUN to
LVM volume
group and carve off logical volumes for the KVM VMs to use.  These can then have
meaningful LVM names in /dev/vg_(VG)/lv_(LV) that can be allocated to the VM.
See
system-config-lvm.

If you're planning to migrate between machines then the LVM solution is not
going to
work.  In that case then you might need to create volumes on you FC controller
that will
be seen as individual devices/luns on the host servers.  There is a consistent
device name
that can be used that appears under /dev/disk/by-id. This will be identical on
any host
servers that can see that volume.  This can be allocated to the VM and will be
consistent
for a migration.  Using this method requires careful management and meticulous 
documentation of which LUNs have been allocated to which VM.  The lun ids are
not very
user friendly.

We've also have good results with DRBD for times when you want to be able to
migrate
between machines but do not have a SAN.  You have to  allocate all the storage
on each
server but you gain by having a sort of backup.

Finally, I can recommend convirt as a good system manager interface.


Regards
Brett

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