Ceph is quite complicated, and I suspect you're going to run into
serious issues trying to get RBD support in iPXE. You'd really need to
implement a tiny RBD client, which sounds like it would be pretty
complicated.
I'd suggest an alternative: Store the linux kernel and initramfs in
Ceph Object Storage. iPXE can already boot from HTTP, so you can load
your kernel/initrd via object storage, then let the kernel handle
booting from the RBD.
I can't really help with how to get the XenServer initrd to support
Ceph, but that seems like a far simpler process then updating iPXE to
support Ceph.
On 5/13/2014 11:23 AM, Stephen Perkins wrote:
Hi all,
I have a goal in mind and I'm not entirely sure how to reach it.
So... with this in mind, I thought I would discuss what I want as an
end result and then ask if a certain approach may make sense.
End goal: Create a highly available (no single point of failure)
scale out infrastructure for booting and running diskless XenServer
hosts and lots of Guest Operating systems that have live migration
capabilities. I want this with as few systems in place as is possible.
While most people will start down the iSCSI path, I am not entirely
sure that this is the approach I would like to look at. The iPXE full
iSCSI stack is awesome and provides great capabilities but it requires
a lot of clustering work to make it highly available. This is
compounded if you want a cluster with more than 2 nodes.
I am interested in using the ceph clustered storage system. This
system already provides me with a highly available scale out solution
and... once configured and working give me the highly available
storage I want and integrates well with the Xen Clients.
But... the hard part is that I want to boot diskless XenServers from
this ceph store. This is where:
1) iPXE comes in
2) My knowledge about ends
My thought is that I would boot a customized iPXE from a tiny USB DOM
or a highly available DHCP/TFTP/PXEboot infrastructure. Once iPXE is
running, I would like to boot directly from a ceph cluster volume
instead of the more standard iSCSI volume.
So, I wanted to ask thoughts on whether it makes sense to try to
develop another backend connectivity option to iPXE. I would like to
look at adding a ceph/RBD option that will allow me to provide a list
of IP addresses (and other needed config info) for the ceph cluster
and allow me to mount a ceph store to boot from.
Then... I would have to address the problem of how to get an initrd
for XenServer that would have the ceph modules available and allow me
to boot a root file system from there.
Is iPXE the correct place to look to help provide this?
Is this a hugely monumental project... or just a monumental project
(given that the ceph client code exists and is open source)...
I thought I would reach out here before I wrote to the ceph group. I
my approach is embarrassingly wrong, please feel free to let me know!
Thanks,
- Steve
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