CentOS - Oct 2010 - best practices in using shared storage for XEN Virtual Machines and auto-failover?

Hi all,

Can anyone pleas tell me what would be best practice to use shared
storage with virtual machines, especially when it involved high
availability / automated failover between 2 XEN servers?

i.e. if I setup 2x identical XEN servers, each with say 16GB RAM, 4x
1GB NIC's, etc. Then I need the xen domU's to auto failover between
the 2 servers if either goes down (hardware failure / overload /
kernel updates / etc).

What is the best way to connect a NAS / SAN to these 2 servers for
this kind of setup to work flawlessly? The NAS can export iSCSI, NFS,
SMB, etc. I'm sure I could even use ATAOE if needed

-- 
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
SoftDux

Website: http://www.SoftDux.com
Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com
Office: 087 805 9573
Cell: 082 554 7532

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 01:25:01PM +0200, Rudi Ahlers
wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Can anyone pleas tell me what would be best practice to use shared
> storage with virtual machines, especially when it involved high
> availability / automated failover between 2 XEN servers?
> 
> i.e. if I setup 2x identical XEN servers, each with say 16GB RAM, 4x
> 1GB NIC's, etc. Then I need the xen domU's to auto failover between
> the 2 servers if either goes down (hardware failure / overload /
> kernel updates / etc).
> 
> What is the best way to connect a NAS / SAN to these 2 servers for
> this kind of setup to work flawlessly? The NAS can export iSCSI, NFS,
> SMB, etc. I'm sure I could even use ATAOE if needed
> 
You could use Citrix XenServer, or XCP.. they're based on CentOS 5,
and they support shared storage with iSCSI out-of-the-box on multi-host pools.

If you go with the "plain" CentOS route you need to script/manage it
yourself.

-- Pasi

> What is the best way to connect a NAS / SAN to these 2 servers for
> this kind of setup to work flawlessly? The NAS can export iSCSI, NFS,
> SMB, etc. I'm sure I could even use ATAOE if needed
Unless you want to use cluster aware filesystems I'd say NFS is your best
bet.


-- 
Drew

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
--Marie Curie

I am very happy with RedHat Cluster Suite and GFS2 on a shared SAN 
storage (i.e. scsi block device), since RedHat Cluster Suite not only 
handles the file systems but also looks to the availability of the xen 
vms (live migration, restart, etc.).

Dirk

Am 14.10.10 13:25, schrieb Rudi Ahlers:
> Hi all,
>
> Can anyone pleas tell me what would be best practice to use shared
> storage with virtual machines, especially when it involved high
> availability / automated failover between 2 XEN servers?
>
> i.e. if I setup 2x identical XEN servers, each with say 16GB RAM, 4x
> 1GB NIC's, etc. Then I need the xen domU's to auto failover between
> the 2 servers if either goes down (hardware failure / overload /
> kernel updates / etc).
>
> What is the best way to connect a NAS / SAN to these 2 servers for
> this kind of setup to work flawlessly? The NAS can export iSCSI, NFS,
> SMB, etc. I'm sure I could even use ATAOE if needed
>