Need advice with 3 servers and 1 SAN
I am new to oVirt, and I am trying to find the right solution for my LAN. On an air-gapped network, I have 3 Dell PowerEdge servers running Alma Linux 9 and 1 IBM SAN. I have 3 iSCSI connections from the IBM SAN to the 3 Dell servers. I am looking to install oVirt as 3 Enterprise Linux hosts on the 3 Dell servers. I need the 3 Enterprise Linux hosts to have shared storage, so all 3 hosts can access all of the virtual machines. I need the storage to have high availability, so if 1 host goes down the virtual machines can run on the other hosts. Which kind of storage do I use for this? NFS, iSCSI, cluster...etc? Also, do I connect the IBM SAN to only 1 host, and share that IBM SAN storage with the other 2 hosts, or would I create 3 separate iSCSI connections to each host? I would really appreciate any assistance from anyone. Thank you.
HI, Each host should have its own iSCSI connection to the SAN. That, most likely, implies an iSCSI connection between each host and the SAN. I suppose you could use NFS instead of iSCSI, but I suspect iSCSI would be better. You do NOT want to have host1 have a connection to the SAN and then hosts 2 and 3 access the SAN via host1, because if host1 goes down, then hosts 2 and 3 lose access to storage. Note that you still have a single point of failure: the SAN itself. -derek On Fri, October 31, 2025 9:44 am, provensen--- via Users wrote:
I am new to oVirt, and I am trying to find the right solution for my LAN. On an air-gapped network, I have 3 Dell PowerEdge servers running Alma Linux 9 and 1 IBM SAN. I have 3 iSCSI connections from the IBM SAN to the 3 Dell servers. I am looking to install oVirt as 3 Enterprise Linux hosts on the 3 Dell servers. I need the 3 Enterprise Linux hosts to have shared storage, so all 3 hosts can access all of the virtual machines. I need the storage to have high availability, so if 1 host goes down the virtual machines can run on the other hosts. Which kind of storage do I use for this? NFS, iSCSI, cluster...etc? Also, do I connect the IBM SAN to only 1 host, and share that IBM SAN storage with the other 2 hosts, or would I create 3 separate iSCSI connections to each host? I would really appreciate any assistance from anyone. Thank you. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/privacy-policy.html oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/community-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/message/WND3JUXGDTNSRS...
-- Derek Atkins 617-623-3745 derek@ihtfp.com www.ihtfp.com Computer and Internet Security Consultant
Again, I am new with all of this. I have been trying to figure out the most efficient setup, and learning oVirt at the same time. I do not have any experience with oVirt at all. I have 3 Dell PowerEdge servers which will be the 3 hosts, and I have an IBM SAN. I have a LAN connection and a separate iSCSI connection (to the IBM SAN) for each host. Looking over the setups, I feel the Self-Hosted Engine Architecture will work best. I have several questions about this setup: 1- I understand the Manager is a VM on 1 of the hosts, but what about the oVirt Engine? 2- Can the oVirt Engine be a VM also on 1 of the hosts? Or should the oVirt Engine be a separate VM not hosted on 1 of the 3 hosts? 3- What is the difference between the Manager and Engine? 4- Can the oVirt Engine also be the Manager as 1 VM? 5- Does the oVirt Engine have to be on the same VLAN as the 3 hosts? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Please respond. Thank you, Ethan
Hi Ethan, On 11/17/25 14:48, Ethan Provensen via Users wrote:
Again, I am new with all of this. I have been trying to figure out the most efficient setup, and learning oVirt at the same time. I do not have any experience with oVirt at all. I have 3 Dell PowerEdge servers which will be the 3 hosts, and I have an IBM SAN. I have a LAN connection and a separate iSCSI connection (to the IBM SAN) for each host. Looking over the setups, I feel the Self-Hosted Engine Architecture will work best. I have several questions about this setup: 1- I understand the Manager is a VM on 1 of the hosts, but what about the oVirt Engine?
Manager = oVirt engine. It can be hosted as VM on one of hosts (it is called Selfhosted Engine (SE)) or can be run on separate server (Standalone Engine)
2- Can the oVirt Engine be a VM also on 1 of the hosts? Or should the oVirt Engine be a separate VM not hosted on 1 of the 3 hosts? 3- What is the difference between the Manager and Engine? 4- Can the oVirt Engine also be the Manager as 1 VM? 5- Does the oVirt Engine have to be on the same VLAN as the 3 hosts?
it depends on your topology. In standalone deployment it can be on different vlan for sure, for SE I am not sure at the moment (I am running SE on the same vlan as hosts in my topology but I am not sure if it is condition or not). Cheers, Jiri
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Please respond.
Thank you, Ethan _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/privacy-policy.html oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/community-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/message/GYCGCDRTUDFNAK...
participants (4)
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Derek Atkins -
Ethan Provensen -
Jiří Sléžka -
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