[one-users] Distributed File System with OpenNebula

[Tino Vazquez]

Dear Alexandre, all,

> My concern is now how does it really work ? For example if I have 2 hypervisors or more, would it be possible to access the same > share space with something else than NFS ? And would it be seen as one unique system from a user point of view (with >loadbalancing I assume) ? We would prefer not to use NFS but I haven't seen alternatives yet.

You can use a wide range of DFS, and you can share the same filesystem
between different hypervisors. If you want to use VMware hypervisors
you need to make sure that the DFS server is compatible with NFS
clients. For instance, glusterfs can be used in VMware hosts (as
discussed in [1]). There are also SANs which expose a NFS interface
and do have good performance.

Moreover, the new v3.4 release of OpenNebula will come with a
completely revamped datastore backend, where you will be able to
cluster your ESX hosts using NFS-compatible FS for one cluster and SSH
transfer for others.

> My idea is actually to build something similar to Amazon EBS, I know it's possible with Eucalyptus which I am also testing in the
> meantime but I have no idea how to do it with OpenNebula right now and it would be something we would really like to have.

The DATABLOCK mechanism in OpenNebula may be what you need. You can
create DATABLOCKS before the VM definition, or during it, and
OpenNebula will save them automatically for you. These DATABLOCKS
could then be attached to other VMs, so they will be able to access
the information left by the last VM. It is essentially the same
functionality that the one offered by EBS.

Regards,

-Tino

[1] http://community.gluster.org/q/hi-wonder-if-anyone-can-help-what-is-the-best-practice-for-attaching-a-gluster-node-let-s-say-for-simplicty-a-dl380-stuffed-with-disks-running-raid-50-installed-as-a-gluster-node-to-a-esxi-node-would-the-share-be-mounted-as-nfs-and-connected-to-the-node-by-10gb-inifinband-hba-s-each-end-obviously-you-would-want-many-nodes-of-each-but-for-the-purpose-of-the-question-cheer-s/




--
Constantino Vázquez Blanco, MSc
Project Engineer
OpenNebula - The Open-Source Solution for Data Center Virtualization
www.OpenNebula.org | @tinova79 | @OpenNebula



On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:36 PM, Giovanni Toraldo <me at gionn.net> wrote:
> Hi Alexandre,
>
> 2012/3/22 Alexandre Fouchs <alexandrefouchs at gmail.com>:
>> My concern is now how does it really work ? For example if I have 2
>> hypervisors or more, would it be possible to access the same share space
>> with something else than NFS ? And would it be seen as one unique system
>> from a user point of view (with loadbalancing I assume) ?
>> We would prefer not to use NFS but I haven't seen alternatives yet.
>
> If you stick with ESXi, yes, you don't have many other choices.
> Instead, with KVM and Xen, you can use every supported storage
> technology usually available with a standard Linux system.
>
>> Apparently DFS such as MooseFS exist but what I would like is to be able to
>> connect Unix VM to it but also Windows VM, and MooseFS is Unix only from
>> what I undestand.
>
> You are missing that DFS are usually used as backend storage, so their
> support is strictly depending on your hypervisor hosts and not on the
> VM instances. In other words, you can use MooseFS to run both Linux
> and Windows instances, but you need to use KVM/XEN hosts and not ESXi.
>
> --
> Giovanni Toraldo
> http://gionn.net/about-me
> http://it.linkedin.com/in/giovannitoraldo
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