VIrtualization HA challenge

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

At work I've got 6 aging Intel whiteboxes 4 of which have 64GB, and our
products are very memory intensive. We are planning on installing a
dedicated virtual system. IT wants to get us a Sun Fire X4170. This
system seems to be underpowered for our needs, so we are pushing back
either for a Sun Fire X4470 or (what we prefer) is an HP DL580 G7. Both
the 4470 and the HP have Intel Xeon 7500 (a few different models). The
Sun Fire maxes out at 512GB RAM where the DL 580 maxes out at 1TB. The
X4170 maxes out at 128GB. The issue on the X4170 is that it will
probably run out of steam very quickly especially if we lose one of our
existing servers. We will be using VMWare ESX (Not sure exactly which
version, but IT will preinstall it before they ship the system to us).

On 01/17/2011 12:13 PM, Rich Braun wrote:
> I've spent the past couple months tinkering with tools for high-availab=
ility
> and virtualization; what seems tantalizingly possible is this setup:
>
> - Two multi-core systems with two NIC cards and 4-6 SATA drives, 16-32G=
B of RAM.
> - Xen or VirtualBox virtualization.
> - Two ethernet switches, at least one of which is jumbo-frame capable (=
for use
> as a SAN switch).
> - Open-source SAN with automatic failover of all the storage contained =
in
> these systems.
> - Virtual machines capable of running on either of the two hosts.
>
> It would be a bit of a challenge to build this using /four/ machines (a=
 pair
> each for storage and for virtualization) but doing this on two would ma=
ke it a
> killer-app platform.
>
> I say it's "tantalizing", though, after getting various pieces work
> individually but not quite integrated:  AoE (ATA-over-Ethernet), OCFS2,=
 DRBD,
> VirtualBox.
>
> There's an open-source project called Archipel (archipelproject.org) wh=
ich
> I've yet to investigate.  A good writeup of the state of the art is at
> Aliver's blog:  http://aliver.wordpress.com/ , the 2-Jan entry.  Anothe=
r
> article I find interesting is by Mike Neir (http://mike.neir.org/weblog=
/lvm).
>
> My goal is basically to be able to walk into anyone's data center with =
a set
> of well-tested tools that provide compelling HA and monitoring capabili=
ty
> without all the equipment/software expense of the VMware solution which=
 is
> basically what almost everyone's doing now (and my goal is to think dif=
ferent,
> not just be like everyone else).


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



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