hello tlocke <br>
<br>
i suggest, you should: <br>
<br>
1. virtualize all servers <br>
<br>
we have done this with free vmware esxi 4 <br>
-> all major os versions are suppoorted <br>
-> very stable <br>
-> simple to setup (must have supported nic and hd controller) <br>
-> simple to manage via remote pc <br>
-> you can run copied virtual machines without problem <br>
you are just asked, if it is copied or moved <br>
<br>
-> esxi-server needs to have only a small (best: hardware raid1) bootdrive
<br>
virtualized machines should be saved on a san <br>
<br>
<br>
2. put all virtualized machines on a nas/ san via iscsi or my preferred way:
nfs <br>
this is the part, where a zfs server can do its best <br>
<br>
we use nexentastore + core for this job (opensolaris kernel with
ubuntu-handling) <br>
<br>
you can use commercial nexentastor (free up to 4 gig) <br>
or free nexenta (core) <br>
<br>
for the free nexenta, i developped a webgui, together with simple setup-
instructions and a reference hardware design, see http://www.napp-it.org <br>
(free zfs server for people without or less opensolaris knowledge, management
<br>
is done via browser) <br>
<br>
-> especially coming release (03.2010) of opensolaris (you can try it via
nexenta3 alpha) <br>
is a killer beast for a free san-storage for virtualized servers due to
deduplication support.
<br>
<br>
at the moment you must have two servers (vmware + san) for such a concept.<br>
i'm on the way to integrated the san server into the virtual server. <br>
in this concept, the san server will be saved on the esxi server and is
started <br>
together with esxi. it will then serve a nfs or iscsi datastore with other
virtual servers <br>
to esxi. <br>
this can work properly if i can access raw disks within nexenta via pci
pass-through on a <br>
vt-d capaple mainboard. <br>
(you will loose most of zfs features, if your san-server use esxi-storage)
informations about this project-extension are comming on napp-it.org<br>
<br>
gea
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