Xen users - Feb 2009 - Newbie requesting words of wisdom from the experienced

Hello!
I''m trying to set up a file server for home use. Piece of cake if done
on
physical hw. However, adding a couple hundred bucks for cores and some
memory bought me hardware that would support virtualization well. Besides,
file serving is quite low on resources. This leads me to think that
running e.g. OpenFiler in domU would be a good idea, leaving plenty of
domU execution space for other purposes.

Could you please comment on the idea regarding the feasibility, any
gotchas, pointers or other?

I previously tried FreeNAS as HVM, which didn''t work so well, because
HVM
apparently depends on qemu/ioemu, which can only export four disks, which
is not enough. I need about seven - short term - and an additional four
next time I expand storage.

As a last resort, I guess I could simply set up software RAID in dom0 and
export the resulting volumes to a domU filer, but I would like to be able
to get an SMS if a disk fails. That assumes a server/demon process can
discover it and transmit. The idea is to have as little of such stuff in
dom0 as possible, for security reasons. I''m no security whiz, but
understand that server processes in dom0 probably defeats any security.

Thanks,
/Chris


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christoffer@lindak.se wrote:
> I''m no security whiz, but
> understand that server processes in dom0 probably defeats any security.
might be true; but it''s also reasonable that any hardware monitoring
daemon
should run on Dom0

-- 
Javier

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On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 10:04 PM,  <christoffer@lindak.se>
wrote:
> I previously tried FreeNAS as HVM, which didn''t work so well,
because HVM
> apparently depends on qemu/ioemu, which can only export four disks, which
> is not enough. I need about seven - short term - and an additional four
> next time I expand storage.
Linux and WIndows HVM has PV drivers, which greatly improves I/O
performance and allows use of more than four disks. I don''t know about
*BSD''s though.
>
> As a last resort, I guess I could simply set up software RAID in dom0 and
> export the resulting volumes to a domU filer, but I would like to be able
That could work as well. I prefer to setup LVM on top of RAID, but
it''s your choice.
> to get an SMS if a disk fails. That assumes a server/demon process can
> discover it and transmit.
To detect a fail disk you need something like smartd that has
low-level access to the disks. It''s not feasible to have such tools
running on domU. Leave it at dom0 instead.

Regards,

Fajar

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