[DRBD-user] Planning Xen on DRBD

Helmut Wollmersdorfer helmut.wollmersdorfer at fixpunkt.de
Mon Mar 14 13:04:44 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.


Hello,

having experience with Heartbeat and DRBD 0.7, I now plan to use Xen  
on DRBD.

I would like to get some hints before I order the hardware.

At the moment the services run on 8 Xen-DomUs, 4 physical servers (not  
clustered).

Planned hardware:

- 2 servers, each of them having
- redundant Power supplies
- redundant network connections
- 4 x GB-NICs
- 4 x 1 TB HDDs (RAID10)

OS should be Debian.

The DomUs are independent from each other, i.e. Dom1-4 can run on Node  
1, and Dom5-8 can run on Node2 in normal operations.

Now my questions:

1) Reading a lot via Google and in the archives it is still unclear  
for me, which block-device should be on top of what.

Should each of Xen-DomUs have it's own DRBD-device? Directly on  
(hardware-) RAID10? If yes, is there a benefit of LVM on top of DRBD?

Or which configuration would be 'best'?

2) Is a hardware-STONITH device still necessary? Wich one can be  
suggested to buy here in Germany/Europe? Is there something less  
expensive than APC PDU7921 (~500 EUR), as I would need two of them  
(redundant PSUs, redundant power providers).

3) Which Cluster-Management Software should be used?

TIA

Helmut Wollmersdorfer







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