Re: [Xen-users] Xen hypervisor and HDDs with 4K sectors

["J. Roeleveld" <joost@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter,


On zondag 26 mei 2019 19:31:22 CEST Peter Milesson wrote:
> On 2019-05-26 15:28, Simon Hobson wrote:
> >> I want to use the most modern hardware possible, and in line with that, I
> >> would like to have the option to use HDD (or SSD) drives with 4K sectors
> >> through a hardware RAID controller.

I have since switched to using ZFS for the storage layer, but on my previous 
setup, I was using Xen, LVM and 4K sector disks with a hardware raid 
controller. Never experienced any issues related to the disks being 4K.

As recent tools all tend to default to aligning on 4K regardless, I didn't 
even encounter any bad performance either.

> >> I have been searching information about Xen and support for drives with
> >> 4K sectors, but I haven't seen much information on the subject. I would
> >> be sincerely "dissappointed" if I purchase a new server for 10000+ USD,
> >> only to discover it to be utter useless.> 

I buy them in Euros, but would also be annoyed if the server would be less 
then 1000 USD or EUR.

> > It shouldn't matter.
> > As long as the hardware is supported in Xen/Dom0, and you partition on 4k
> > boundaries, then the guests should be isolated from the underlying
> > details. Obviously it would be a good idea to also partition any virtual
> > drives on 4k boundaries (if partitioning in the guests).

This was my experience as well, but would like to add that partitioning tools 
tend to default to 4K in any case.

> Hi Simon,
> 
> Thanks for your input. That's the point. I have seen a few posts that
> the advanced disk format using 4K sectors is not compatible with Xen.

Can you provide links? As I am curious on this.

--
Joost




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