Jon, there are few things wrongly mentioned in this post about the OVH's network. I would like to correct those:
- iPXE boot is quite simple and you can do that outside VLANs and with minimal amount of servers. You just need the URL to load the kernel image over http. See the OVH REST API under /me/. Load the .ipxe script, apply it under /dedicated/ and there you go! One dedicated server and that's it. It'll boot any kernel image without you going through any more networking hops or buying the USB slot addon. Plus, you get to control the version of platform that you want to boot. - I don't think vRACK / VLAN setup under OVH's infra is a cookie cutter. You'll know what I mean, after paying thousands of dollars to a major colo or IBM's Softlayer. - OVH does bind IPs to the NIC MACs, which I think is a best practice in large networks to prevent unauthorized routes / IP hijacking. While the SmartOS binds vnic external0 with a randomly created MAC, you have two options here. Either, get the Failover (FO) IP, assign it to a virtual MAC from OVH's API/manager and set that up as external0_mac. Or, write a post-setup manifest to grab the IP from external0, unplumb and plumb the igb0 with the primary IP that came with your server (it's bound to first NIC listed in dladm show-phys). This doesn't brick the VMs networking as long as you don't remove the vnic or modify it in anyway. I usually go with the latter. - I avoid the single point of failure with vRACKs setup via their API (though FO IPs work in one region, either ARIN or RIPE) over the private network. Then I replicate the pools/ VMs via a small but specialized script (1000 lines) I wrote, github.com/bassu/bzman. The replication works in a way that you can switch between two machines by deciding which one to make master/primary. Then during a disaster recovery, you simply route the IPs via API and turn on the VMs at the slave/secondary server and promote it to become the new master and run bzman from there. Most of this happens automatically for me via crons. The rerouting / IP move happens at the cost of 30 seconds per FO IP and roughly 10 minutes for a /28. Not that bad considering vmadm's start for all VMs is super quick if your zones are based on clones. Just make sure that a single FO IP is bound to a VNIC at one server at a time otherwise your IP rocking test will be flaky! - Also there are other European providers you wanna check, VPS.net and Hertzner.de. I have heard that they compete very well with OVH. Although they may or may not have private networking available. PM me if you have any more questions. On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 5:56 AM, Jon Dison <[email protected]> wrote: > Would anyone care to share their experience running at a dedicated hosting > provider? > > I currently virtualize a lot of web servers on Proxmox hosted at OVH and > would love to switch over to SmartOS, but OVH's network infrastructure is > fairly cookie-cutter and they don't really allow you to get the sort of > network plumbing setup that SmartOS requires, especially SDC. > > Has anyone managed to successfully setup SmartOS at OVH? > Has anyone setup SmartOS and/or SDC somewhere else and have had a positive > experience? > > The thing I like about OVH is their prices. I suppose you get what you > pay for. > But the same servers are twice as much with other providers and I haven't > gotten a guarantee from them that they can setup the networking the way > that I want either. > > Thanks in advance, > Jon > *smartos-discuss* | Archives > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25253051-d319687c> | > Modify > <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- smartos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25769125-55cfbc00 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=25769125&id_secret=25769125-7688e9fb Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
