From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 19 01:30:42 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81DEA106566B for ; Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:30:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from amvandemore@gmail.com) Received: from mail-pw0-f54.google.com (mail-pw0-f54.google.com [209.85.160.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 566CC8FC1B for ; Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:30:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: by pwj7 with SMTP id 7so1864004pwj.13 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:30:41 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=uo2obvz3Mwoz8w9LRfuzSJHcthlf9wbCCW4hA25QOVs=; b=BEgp3IUPq18WIuYsI7OePeTBKTXmls5j9mFZxmYUF2WGtBl9m6C1EJrrwsmOFTvI/k A+uST8WK3Jg3oEpXEh2DLvvahBT+ugyro0vxFS2xcjBDB3gr6n47F45+6cEu5Ig1rEBw PaLKKn3PzPO5h3QJR9cOP6fPGGOwsy4ZhjbYc= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; b=fUciPd0tlwVLeQbGovJ7pLydVsBYvoAKzMbj/4qEUb4sX0gIerBCQqnW/7OuVD9Eie iEvxQ9xhmdZzqsPjZ1O+9Y02uNxkBzHVeF0pT2Rd9FH5718wBsr0Lh/RS46zgCmEK4if PeW772l/PAVevMySFyyE4nVm2cuTjZeWG0kBM= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.120.7 with SMTP id s7mr6920551wfc.104.1266543041825; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:30:41 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <7f7816241a0798cf35b2d4801325c503.squirrel@www.webcontracts.co.uk> References: <7f7816241a0798cf35b2d4801325c503.squirrel@www.webcontracts.co.uk> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:30:41 -0600 Message-ID: <6201873e1002181730h5ea314d0p4a94db8eca48db04@mail.gmail.com> From: Adam Vande More To: matt@webcontracts.co.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Options for redundant storage cluster? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:30:42 -0000 On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Matthew Law wrote: > Hi, > > hopefully I'm not too far out posting this question here. It takes in a > lot of areas so I was unsure where to post it. If it belongs on another > ML please advise and I will re-post it there. > > I am researching options for a two node failover storage cluster. This is > primarily to provide shared storage (either iSCSI or NFS) for XenServer > VMs. I am looking to get the best bang for the buck and wondering if > FreeBSD might be a good choice? > > Hardware-wise we have available two identical supermicro chassis each with > 16 x SAS bays and a choice of AMD or latest Xeon 5500 CPUs, together with > as many gigabit cards as we need but the budget won't stretch to faster > networking. It would be nice to take advantage of ZFS and use two or > three 8-port SAS HBAs in each server rather than expensive hardware RAID > cards. > > We don't need to store more than around 2TB but we would like to > comfortably service around a 75 - 100 VM instances (the VMs on average, > are not too I/O heavy). Thin provisioning and snapshots would be nice, > too. > > My initial thoughts were that we might be able to use ZFS, cheap LSI 8 > port SAS HBAs together with a dozen or so SATA II drives and a couple of > Intel X25E SSDs to help things along. It would be great if these boxen > could network boot, so we can use all the drive bays for storage. I have > no idea what options exist for clustering NFS/redundancy. > > I would be very grateful for any advice - especially from anyone who has > experience in the same scenario. > > Thanks in advance, > > Matt. > I'd say right now ggated/ggatec + heartbeat is sort of roughly equivalent of DRBD and heartbeat. I think many of us are waiting for HAST though. http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2009-October/001279.html -- Adam Vande More