XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question
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OS: XenServer 7.0
HW: SuperMicro SuperServer 1028R-WTRT
Drive type: All SSD's*** No USB install of XS
Since this chassis has 10 drives & FakeRAID is not recommended, I'm interested in hearing options on how to handle the array for the XS SR.
There are 2 SuperDOM ports, install XS here??
Software RAID or LSI 92xx card for the array ??Look forward to hearing different options.
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I'm unsure of the question. You seem to already know that you need to use software RAID. But I think that the answer that you are looking for is: use software RAID.
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Hardware RAID is great if you are willing to spend the money. LSI and Adaptec are the good players here. Not cheap, but has lots of advantages like officially being supported by Citrix and is "how XenServer is meant to be used" and having blind swap.
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Here is a guide on building XenServer with Software RAID that should help. Guide is XS 6.5 but MD RAID should be identical.
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Installing XenServer to the SuperDOM would work very well.
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@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
I'm unsure of the question.
The goal is to have "another set of eyes" look at it & they may have different solutions.
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@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Hardware RAID is great if you are willing to spend the money. LSI and Adaptec..
Since this chassis has 10 drives, there is no "efficient" way of using all 10 drives with an LSI 92xx-8i card. There is no room to add an expander.
A -16i card would be a waste of $$? -
@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
A -16i card would be a waste of $$?
Depends on your goals, but likely. That will be many hundreds of dollars and no faster than software RAID. It's mostly around support, both internal and external, that the hardware value vs. software RAID would be determined. Software RAID requires more knowledge to set up, monitor and support than hardware RAID does. And does not allow blind swapping which is a major issue if you move to colocation.
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Speaking of blind swapping, is there an easy way of mapping the /dev/sd"x" to the chassis slots?
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@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Speaking of blind swapping, is there an easy way of mapping the /dev/sd"x" to the chassis slots?
No, the OS isn't chassis aware.
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@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Installing XenServer to the SuperDOM would work very well.
I assume, it is "preferred" to not boot XS off the array?
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@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Installing XenServer to the SuperDOM would work very well.
I assume, it is "preferred" to not boot XS off the array?
Correct. It's possible, but the setup to do it is much more involved.
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How about installing XS on both SATA DOM's (using the Intel Fake RAID 1)?
This will let me have redundant copies of the XS install?
** I know Fake RAID is a no-no -
@travisdh1 said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Installing XenServer to the SuperDOM would work very well.
I assume, it is "preferred" to not boot XS off the array?
Correct. It's possible, but the setup to do it is much more involved.
Why not? In fact I would say quite the opposite. You probably do want to boot XS off the array. XS really pushes people away from booting from a SD or USB drive because of the work involved in making sure little to nothing writes to the those drives.
Basically, the same goes for Hyper-V.
Right now, of the main three (I'm skipping KVM) EXSi is the only one that's supported for end customer deployment. Sure you can get support for the others, but they are outside the primary scope.
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@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
How about installing XS on both SATA DOM's (using the Intel Fake RAID 1)?
This will let me have redundant copies of the XS install?
** I know Fake RAID is a no-noI wouldn't do this. I'd just install XS on the main array. You can use your RAID controller to setup the array, then create the partitions you need inside the array - example 50 GB for XS install and the rest for the SR.
If you're doing software RAID, I'm not sure the best way to go about that.
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@Dashrender Hardware RAID, I would say yes.
Though we are talking about software RAID...what to do? -
@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
How about installing XS on both SATA DOM's (using the Intel Fake RAID 1)?
There is, quite literally, no situation under which FakeRAID should ever be entertained as an option for anything. Ever. This cannot possibly be stressed enough.
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@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
** I know Fake RAID is a no-no
Not if you considered using it, ever. It's not a "slightly not recommended" kind of thing, it's totally and absolutely out of the question for any workload where you want any kind of reliability. You would never have RAID 1 on FakeRAID, it makes no sense at all. All the cost of redundancy and then destroying the reliability with FakeRAID. And Intel FakeRAID is worse than most, too!
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@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Though we are talking about software RAID...what to do?
If you don't have hardware RAID, then you use enterprise software RAID that is part of XenServer. There shouldn't be anything to ponder. There are just the two options.
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@scottalanmiller said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
@FATeknollogee said in XenServer install on SuperMicro: software RAID question:
Though we are talking about software RAID...what to do?
If you don't have hardware RAID, then you use enterprise software RAID that is part of XenServer. There shouldn't be anything to ponder. There are just the two options.
How does that look?
a single boot drive that has XS on it? and that loads a driver that create the software RAID on the remaining drives in the system? Or can you include the boot drive?
