Re: [Users] new oVirt installation recommendations

On 10/07/2013 06:13 PM, Jason Keltz wrote: > I've been experimenting with oVirt 3.2 on some old hardware, and am > now preparing to buy new hardware for using oVirt 3.3 in production. > I'm interested in any feedback about what I plan to purchase. I want > to keep the setup as simple as possible. Our current environment > consists of mostly CentOS 6.4 systems. > > The combined oVirt engine and file server will be a Dell R720 with dual > Xeon E5-2660 and 64 GB of memory. The server would have an LSI 9207-8i > HBA connected to the SAS backplane. The R720 enclosure has 16 x 2.5" > disk slots. I would get 2 x 500 GB NLSAS drives for mirrored md rood > (raid1), use 12 slots for RAID10 SAS 10K rpm drives (either 600 GB or > 900 GB), and have an additional 2 spares. Data storage would be > virtual machines, and some associated data. The O/S would be CentOS > 6.4. > > The nodes would be 3 x Dell R620, dual Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, > each with just a single, small NL SAS root drive. There would be no > other local storage. All VMs would use the file server as the > datastore. The nodes would run oVirt node. > > In terms of networking, each machine would have 4 ports - 2 x 1 Gb > (bonded) giving machines access to "public" network (that we do not > control). The 2 x 10 Gb copper would be connected to a locally > installed copper 10G switch that we fully control - 1 port used for > storage, and 1 for management/consoles/VM migration. > > A few additional notes ... > > I chose to stick with software raid MD on the file server, mostly for > cost, and simplicity. I have a lot of experience good with MD, and > performance seems reasonable. > > I would have gone SSD for the file server root disk, but the cost > from Dell for their SSD is prohibitive, and I want the whole system > to be included in the warranty. NLSAS is the cheapest disk that will > have support for the duration of the warranty period (with Dell > servers, SATA drives are only warranted for 1 year). > > The nodes with 1 NLSAS drive... I've thought about replacing that > with simply an SD card. It's not clear if this the best solution, or > how much space I would need on that card. At least when I configure > via the Dell web site, the biggest SD card it seems I can purchase > with a server is 2 GB which doesn't seem like very much! I guess people guy bigger > cards separately. I know a disk will work, and give me more than > enough space and no hassle. > > I've chosen to keep the setup simple by using NFS on the file server, > but I see a whole lot of people here experimenting with the new > Gluster capabilities in oVirt 3.3. It's not clear if that's being > used in production, or how reliable that would be. I really can't > find information on performance tests, etc with Gluster and oVirt, in > particular, with comparison of NFS and Gluster. Would there be a gluster is still not available for centos 6.4, and there are some issues with snapshots around it still for libgfapi. for posixfs, its supported since 3.2.

> performance advantage to using Gluster here? How would it work? by > adding disk to the nodes, and getting rid of the file server (or at > least turning the file server into a smaller engine only server)? > How would this impact the nodes in terms of their ability to handle VMs? > (performance?) I presently have no experience with Gluster > whatsoever, though I'm certainly never against learning something > new, especially should it benefit my project. Unfortunately, as I'm > positive everyone can attest for is that it's just trouble finding > the number of hours in the day :) There's one thing for sure - > Gluster itself, while maybe not TOO complicated is still more complicated than an NFS only setup. I don't have details on this, and hope others have. but you are correct its an entirely different deployment architecture between a central nfs server, and distributed storage on the nodes.

> > As I've mentioned before, we don't use LDAP for authentication, so > I'll be restricted to one admin user at the moment unless I setup a > separate infrastructure for oVirt authentication. That will be fine > for a little while. I understand that work may be underway for > pluggable authentication with oVirt. I'm not sure if that ties into > any of the items on Itamar's list though. Itamar? :) I was hoping to > see that pluggable authentication model sooner rather than later so > that I could write something to work with our custom auth system. well, you could also launch an openldap/ipa/ad/etc. in a VM. of course if it has issues you'd need admin@internal to fix it.

> > In terms of power management - my existing machines are using a > Raritan KVM with Raritan power management dongles and power bars. I > haven't had an opportunity to see if oVirt can manage the devices, > but I guess if oVirt can't do it, I can continue to manage power > through the KVM interface. are they supported by fence-agents in centos?

> > Any feedback would be much appreciated. >