[DRBD-user] Decent shared storage setup for virtualization

Mike Lovell mike at dev-zero.net
Tue Feb 15 04:07:21 CET 2011

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


On 02/14/2011 12:59 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> I'm trying to wrap my head around storage setups that might work for 
> virtualization and I wonder if people here have experience with 
> creating a drbd setup for this purpose.
>
> What I am currently planning to implement is this:
> 2 Storage 8-bay nodes with 8gb RAM and a dual-core Xeon processor.
> Each system with gets equipped with 8 1TB SATA drives in a raid-5 
> configuration.
> Networking will either be two dual-port cards or two quad-core cards 
> which I plan to setup as bonded interfaces (balance-xor).
>
> I'm particularly worried about the networking side being a bottleneck 
> for the setup. I was looking into 10gbit and infiniband equipment but 
> they drive the cost up quite a bit and I'm not sure if they are 
> necessary if I can bond several 1gbit interfaces.
>
> Any thoughts?

performance over bonded gig-e links has been talked about a few times in 
the past. seems like there is the discussion brought up regularly. here 
are links to the beginnings of 2 threads.

http://lists.linbit.com/pipermail/drbd-user/2010-May/014113.html
http://lists.linbit.com/pipermail/drbd-user/2010-September/014848.html

there are several more to read through. the basics i got from glancing 
threads like these in the past is that bonding does okay for 2 
interfaces but there isn't huge gains when going to 4 interfaces. also, 
considering that a 4 port ethernet card is gonna cost about 200 on the 
cheap end and can go much higher, using a older infiniband card or a 
10gig-e card can make sense. there has been talk of inifiniband cards 
that can do 10gbps for under $200 on the list but i haven't actually 
done it myself. maybe someone else can chime in on that. i've also seen 
10gig-e gear for under $500.

hope that provides some help.

mike



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