Xen Server 6.5 + Xen Orchestra w. HA & SAN
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It's been about 3 years total since I've worked with XenServer. Current setup and primary Xenserver node is running 6.0 (old...) early on, i really did not like the strangle-hold citrix had on the features and such, But I know later version are much better. I'm worried to upgrade to 6.1 - should i be? or should it be seemless and not break and Windows VM's ?
Anyways.. really looking into option for a new deployment and future build for current office needs... Already looked at Scale computing. Looks very good and pricing is subjective to the quality of product. nice!
I really like Xen Orchestra and features it presents for XenServer hosts. This was not available tool back when I first implemented xen server. Its really amazing the new tools available to us today....
Was thinking 2 Xen Server hosts with HA-Enabled (is this availble on FREE?) and using Xen Orchestra.
Local storage (SR) sounds nice on the hosts.. not sure if HA-Lizard (DRDB) is supported with Xen Orchestra.
So was thinking of a redundant HA-setup with some high-end Synology 2U units... using NFS storage as SR (rather than iSCSI). Due to storage visibility over network (ability to access actual storage VHD)
Would have a dedicated 10Gbe switch that would have servers connected(2 NIC interfaces - LACP) and also the NAS units.
And then the 2 servers directly connected with patch cable(s) for Xen Orchestra to work.
this is all conceptual....
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Everything you need is available for free with XenServer (or Xen) as the entire platform is from the open source community.
@halizard can tell you about HALizard HA functionality with just 2 host. Which is something I'm going to be testing with here when I get a few free minutes.
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The production environment will be similar to K12 setup. (in my mind). Be for a larger company of 200+ employee's, plus overturn.
As workstations will have folder redirection and data everywhere for files / saves / network file shares for storage.
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@ntoxicator said:
The production environment will be similar to K12 setup. (in my mind). Be for a larger company of 200+ employee's, plus overturn.
As workstations will have folder redirection and data everywhere for files / saves / network file shares for storage.
But this has nothing to do with the hypervisor, this is a VM level setup. Your file server, your domain information, all at the VM.
The Hypervisor manages the VM's themselves, not the functions of the VM's.
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I understand this. Just throwing it out there of the bigger picture for the production environment. Hence why wanting HA and also network storage.
I'm just worry about localized storage on the nodes/servers. As it has to sync across in nearly real time; and then the scalability of that. Would essentially have to spec out the local nodes to have as much storage capacity as possible; to sustain future growth and storage needs.
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I'm just worry about localized storage on the nodes/servers. As it has to sync across in nearly real time; and then the scalability of that.
It has to do that with shared storage also.
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@ntoxicator said:
I'm worried to upgrade to 6.1 - should i be? or should it be seemless and not break and Windows VM's ?
I guess first things first.. do you need HA? What is your RTO and RPO? (recovery time objective, recovery point objective)
Moving past that, are you thinking one NAS or two? If only one, you're looking at an IPOD (inverted pyramid of doom). In other words, if you only have one NAS, and two servers, what happens when the NAS fails?
More to come.
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@Dashrender He is planning on using DRBD (via HALizard) so no NAS involved at all.
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@Romo said:
@Dashrender He is planning on using DRBD (via HALizard) so no NAS involved at all.
Are you sure? I'm not - Actually I don't know where he's at, at all. There was a bunch of jumping around. that's not meant to sound mean - the OP just covered a lot of ground throwing out lots of options - I'm guessing to see what sticks.
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Look - i was just throwing generalized idea out there, conceptual.
Yes -- would be two(2) NAS servers running HA / data sync.
Was considering two(2) servers to run XenServer 6.5 latest and greatest and to use OXA to manage; a single management portal (more features than XenCenter). The rolling delta back-ups is a nice feature...more worthwhile than snapshots.
That way can have rolling delta back-ups, and also HA-Storage on the network storage devices.
However, I was also considering rather than doing Network storage -- as I know @scottalanmiller has said otherwise..... that I can do a DRDB setup using HA-Lizard on XenServer 6.5
However, for DRDB setup -- I would have to spec the server nodes with large drives. Would have to be a nice 2U server with 12+ drives
As right now, We have over 1.5TB of data being stored. I see this growing much larger over the coming years.
Not to mention need a place locally to store snapshots, or back-up data.. and other NFS shares (System imaging, ISO store, misc)
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@ntoxicator 1.5TB of data is..... really tiny today. Storage space isn't really a problem, it's performance (IOPS). If we assume HDD, then we need more of them purely for performance than amount of storage. They're selling 10TB drives!
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@ntoxicator said:
The rolling delta back-ups is a nice feature...more worthwhile than snapshots.
Just an FYI, snapshots are not backups, unless you're not talking about VM level snapshots... then I'm not sure what you mean.
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@ntoxicator said:
I'm just worry about localized storage on the nodes/servers. As it has to sync across in nearly real time; and then the scalability of that.
No different than a SAN has to do. SANs have all the same limitations as local storage. There is no way around this, syncing takes time. It's just a physical limitation.
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@ntoxicator said:
However, for DRDB setup -- I would have to spec the server nodes with large drives. Would have to be a nice 2U server with 12+ drives
If you don't you'd have to spec two additional NAS with large drives. So while you can present this as a negative, it's actually a positive.
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@ntoxicator said:
As right now, We have over 1.5TB of data being stored. I see this growing much larger over the coming years.
That's tiny.
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@ntoxicator said:
Not to mention need a place locally to store snapshots, or back-up data.. and other NFS shares (System imaging, ISO store, misc)
ISO store you can throw on a cheap NAS or any desktop. Don't use production HA resources for that.
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@Dashrender said:
I guess first things first.. do you need HA? What is your RTO and RPO? (recovery time objective, recovery point objective)
That's definitely the first question. HA with only 200 users? Possible but very unlikely. Has someone run the numbers on this?
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@ntoxicator said:
So was thinking of a redundant HA-setup with some high-end Synology 2U units... using NFS storage as SR (rather than iSCSI).
Not possible. Synology offers file server HA but not VM backing HA. Synology can't fail over faster enough to not have the VMs fail. You will be looking at a cluster of EMC or 3PAR type units to be able to do NAS or SAN with HA. Anything less and you generally can't do HA for storage.
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@ntoxicator said:
However, I was also considering rather than doing Network storage -- as I know @scottalanmiller has said otherwise..... that I can do a DRDB setup using HA-Lizard on XenServer 6.5
However, for DRDB setup -- I would have to spec the server nodes with large drives. Would have to be a nice 2U server with 12+ drives
As right now, We have over 1.5TB of data being stored. I see this growing much larger over the coming years.
1.5 TB isn't very much data today. You could easily get that with 4 SSD 500 GB drives in RAID 5 (yep RAID 5 is good again, as long as you're only using it on SSD drives).
An 8 drive array of 500 GB SSD drives would give you 3.5 TB of usable space. Most 2U chassis can do this pretty easily. This might be a bit over budget, and assuming you get the IOPs you need, you could go with eight 1 TB drives in RAID 10 and have 4 TB of usable space.
Is HA really needed? If your business needs really warrant it, i.e. being down for 4 hour response time from Tier 1 server providers costs you thousands or 10's of thousands, then definitely scope it out.
In that case you could go with two servers, each with eight 2 TB drives in RAID 10 in DRDB (or StarWind).
I'm guessing that the cost of two NAS/SAN devices and two switches will likely outweigh the cost of 2U servers that hold 8+ drives, plus that two NAS/SAN solution is still less reliable than a two server situation.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ntoxicator said:
So was thinking of a redundant HA-setup with some high-end Synology 2U units... using NFS storage as SR (rather than iSCSI).
Not possible. Synology offers file server HA but not VM backing HA. Synology can't fail over faster enough to not have the VMs fail. You will be looking at a cluster of EMC or 3PAR type units to be able to do NAS or SAN with HA. Anything less and you generally can't do HA for storage.
Is this because the storage syncing is to slow?
