[DRBD-user] Decent shared storage setup for virtualization

Mike Lovell mike at dev-zero.net
Tue Feb 15 07:15:26 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 08:29 PM, yvette hirth wrote:
> Mike Lovell wrote:
>
>> On 02/14/2011 12:59 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>>> 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.
>
>> 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.
>
> the big cost is the switches.  10g switches, even small ones, start at 
> around $3k and go up from there.
>
> for a while mellanox had a ddr ib "kit", with four or so cards, sfp's, 
> cables, and the switch, for around $6-7k.  while that's still a big 
> budget bite to swallow, $7k to network 4 boxes at 20gbps is a fab deal.

for just a 2 server set up, switches aren't needed. at least not for 
10gig-e. the 10gig-e nics i tried could just be used with a cable 
between them and it auto-detected the crossover. i would guess 
infiniband is similar. larger than 2 server set ups will require 
switching and get more expensive. i was assuming that the context of the 
question was just about the link for drbd between the servers and not 
the connectivity to the rest of the network.

mike



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