RE: [Xen-users] Alternatives to a dual-primary DRBD setup

["James Harper" <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> Hi there,
> 
> usually I am just lurking around here collecting ideas about issues
that
> I could run into in the future but now it seems my time has come to
ask
> for your help...
> 
> Until now I ran a Citrix Xenserver 5.6 on a dual-primary DRBD setup.
But
> for any reason I am experiencing sync problems now, maybe due to the
> raised I/O load (setup without guest machines, now ten virtual
servers).
> 
> I am tapping a bit in darkness at searching for the needle in the
> haystack causing the problems. Therefore I am thinking about possible
> alternatives that allow useful things like XenMotion but possibly at a
> lower performance usage level.
> 
> My current setup:
> - two servers with dual 12-core Opterons and 32 GB RAM, each
> - each server equipped with a 500 MB (hardware) RAID1 for the host and
> with a 14 TB (hardware) RAID5 for the guests that's being replicated
> using DRBD
> - each server with a 10 GbE NIC
> - Citrix Xenserver 5.6, both running in one pool
> 
> What are your ideas? Is it worth thinking about other storage
solutions?
> 

I would consider splitting up the storage and VM functions onto separate
servers. So 2 servers running DRBD and exporting LUN's via iSCSI (or AoE
or FCoE or whatever works for you) and then 2 (or more) servers running
VMs. This obviously needs more hardware though.

Having said that, can you elaborate on the "sync issues" you are having
with DRBD? Anything that breaks under high load is still IMHO a bug and
can probably also break under low load, just less often, Are you running
the latest version?

James

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