Keeping the storage in sync between the 2 boxes is going to be tricky. But, if your VM guests are static, then that doesn't matter.
I use 2850's and local storage with VMWare Server & DRBD for basically the same thing for my personal webhosting. DRBD is a block level network mirroring driver that runs on the host Linux OS to keep the storage partitions in sync between the 2 boxes. Then I just suspend/export/resume if I want to swap the VM guests between the 2850's. Of course, you take a performance hit by using VMWare Server over ESX/ESXi so it may not be the best option, but was something I wanted to play with at the time. :) --chris -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Derek Yuen Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 12:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: PE2850/PV220s & VMware ESXi configuration? Hi, I'd appreciate any advice on how to make use/configure two PowerEdge 2850s with a PowerVault PV220s. Both machines have two PERC4/DC cards, which presumably gives me some configuration flexibility on the storage. I was thinking (conceptually) of building a VMWare ESXi environment out of them to replace the two-dozen Sun SparcStation 20/Ultra 1/Ultra 10 boxes that are dying to be replaced. (or they're just dying anyway, seeing how three has died in a week) I know, the PV220s is not a true SAN, which means no Vmotion for me. I'm thinking of a split-bus configuration and each of the 2850's will have a piece of the storage. Then I'll just duplicate the VMs so both 2850s runs the same VMs on the PV220s and call it a day. This should get me "high availability" and "redundancy" without too much work. Could someone confirm if this is possible ? If you're already doing it, were there any pitfalls that you've experienced ? Is there a better way to use/configure this combo of hardware ? Thanks in advance, Derek _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
