[Openstack-operators] Using a SAN for nova-volume & KVM

John Garbutt John.Garbutt at citrix.com
Mon Jul 30 15:55:43 UTC 2012


Interesting, thanks for the feedback.

Not tried Razor myself, but you might be interested in xcp-xapi on Ubuntu, which gives you most of XCP/XenServer while running on Ubuntu. That should be able to run inside your deployment system:
http://www.xen.org/news/2012/05_xcp_in_ubuntu_server_12_04_LTS.html

Also, you can PXE install XenServer with an answer file, which would give the rapid deployment you need. The post install script would be able to wget and install the VM image that would run the nova code, and that can bootstap into your puppet environment:
http://docs.vmd.citrix.com/XenServer/6.0.0/1.0/en_gb/installation.html#pxe_boot_install

Thanks for your help,
John

From: Thomas Vachon [mailto:vachon at sessionm.com]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 3:59 PM
To: John Garbutt
Cc: openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] Using a SAN for nova-volume & KVM

Well first of all, we are using a deployment system which will not support your system.  That is by far the #1 blocker (we are using Razor/Puppet).  Live migration isn't something we "need" today, but the ability to rebuild our cluster in a matter of an hour is.  This is why We can't really get into XCP



--
Thomas Vachon
Principal Operations Architect
session M
+1-617-963-8993 x7104
vachon at sessionm.com<mailto:vachon at sessionm.com>


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:27 AM, John Garbutt <John.Garbutt at citrix.com<mailto:John.Garbutt at citrix.com>> wrote:
It would be good to get that full list, so we can expand this doc, and look at closing any remaining gap:
http://wiki.openstack.org/HypervisorSupportMatrix

We have live-migration, hopefully, going into Folsom.
If you are using pools attached to shared storage (through host-aggregates), live migration support is in trunk.
The local disk block migrate version is up for review right now (the cross pool volume migration should be on its way soon):
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/xenapi-live-block-migration

Thanks,
John

From: Thomas Vachon [mailto:vachon at sessionm.com<mailto:vachon at sessionm.com>]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 3:14 PM
To: John Garbutt
Cc: openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org>

Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] Using a SAN for nova-volume & KVM

XenServer as a hypervisor does not have all the features we are looking for, for instance, live migration.

--
Thomas Vachon
Principal Operations Architect
session M
+1-617-963-8993 x7104
vachon at sessionm.com<mailto:vachon at sessionm.com>

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:10 AM, John Garbutt <John.Garbutt at citrix.com<mailto:John.Garbutt at citrix.com>> wrote:
Thomas, any reason you had issues using XenServer? I don't understand your commend about HA networking? The XenAPI driver supports OpenStack's HA networking. I would like to understand what we more you would need to start using XenServer with OpenStack.

The Dell connector should work with OpenSource version of XenServer, called XCP. Although the free edition of XenServer should do all you need.

You can use the Dell storage as part of the XenServer storage manager integration in nova-volume.  Renuka is adding the support into Cinder soon, which is more likely to meet your needs, so she should be able to help you. It might be good to have a real user work with her to get the feature working how you want it.

I hope that helps,
John

From: Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com<mailto:Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com> [mailto:Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com<mailto:Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com>]
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 5:13 AM
To: openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org<mailto:openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org>

Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] Using a SAN for nova-volume & KVM

Lorin,

Thanks for forwarding.  I am the right contact for this.

Yes - there is something we can do to help with this.  I can't do it on the list at this time so I'm contacting Jon & Thomas directly to continue the conversation.

If other people are interested in this capability, please let me know.

Rob Hirschfeld
Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com<mailto:Rob_Hirschfeld at Dell.com>
@zehicle

From: Lorin Hochstein [mailto:lorin at nimbisservices.com]<mailto:[mailto:lorin at nimbisservices.com]>
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2012 10:18 PM
To: Jonathan Proulx
Cc: Thomas Vachon; OpenStack Operators; Hirschfeld, Rob; Stephen Spector
Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] Using a SAN for nova-volume & KVM

Jon:

There are several people from Dell that are active in the OpenStack community, they're probably good points of contact to engage with Dell on this issue. Two names I know of offhand are:

- Stephen Spector
- Rob Hirschfeld

Take care,

Lorin
--
Lorin Hochstein
Lead Architect - Cloud Services
Nimbis Services, Inc.
www.nimbisservices.com<https://www.nimbisservices.com/>


On Jul 28, 2012, at 9:44 PM, Jonathan Proulx <jon at jonproulx.com<mailto:jon at jonproulx.com>> wrote:

It does look like nova/volume/san.py could be extended to use the
EqlCliExec.py utility from the Equallogic SDK, unfortunately all the
pieces of the SDK are full of this copyright:

Copyright (C) 2009 by Dell, Inc.

All rights reserved.  This software may not be copied, disclosed,
transferred, or used except in accordance with a license granted
by Dell, Inc.  This software embodies proprietary information
and trade secrets of Dell, Inc

So unless we can talk Dell into being more sane with licensing, full
and proper integration with OpenStack is unlikely.

-Jon

On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Jonathan Proulx <jon at jonproulx.com<mailto:jon at jonproulx.com>> wrote:
Hi Tom,

Hopefully someone has a better answer for you as I'm still relatively
new to OpenStack myself, but I looked into this a little while ago
because I too have an Equalogic SAN and KVM hypervisors.  The
Equalogic connector in that equation is provided by XenServer not
OpenStack (in fact I think but am less sure that it isn't even part of
the opensource xen).

Since I'm running a research system I can take some risks and have
decided to go this Ceph for my storage needs, if I were in your HA
needing shoes I'd look at how much coding was required to hook
Equalogic's API (which exists but I haven't looked at in years) into
the nova-volume service, you could be someone's hero, but I don't
think there's any current work toward this.

I'd be happy to be told I'm wrong about that...

-Jon

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Thomas Vachon <vachon at sessionm.com<mailto:vachon at sessionm.com>> wrote:
Hi All,

We are architecting our system for KVM (as it is the best hypervisor for
your money for HA networking) and a SAN for HA nova-volumes.  The only
reference to being able to use a SAN is with XenServer as the hypervisor.  I
have no problem giving a server permission to create luns (or pre-creating
them if I have to) for now.  I want to make sure I can point all the stuff
to the SAN instead of doing some half-hearted attempt by using a box as a
proxy.

Our san is an EQL so iSCSI is easy.  Also, we run our "san" net on a
separate 10Gbe set of interfaces (all the servers have connectivity into the
SAN layer).

Any thoughts?

--
Thomas Vachon
Principal Operations Architect
session M


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