Cloudmin: XEN: support for partitions (phy:) needed ?

Submitted by beat on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 10:15

Finally, up to now we have been using dedicated partitions on the harddisks for performance reasons, but I see that Cloudmin does support only files. Files would be more convenient for us too.

Do you have any analysis on inpact on performances using files (specially with disk-intensive database accesses) ?

If performance in files isn't an issue, then this is not a priority.... Is it an issue ?

(created as separate request as required here: http://www.virtualmin.com/node/10180#comment-44066 )

Related probably to: https://www.virtualmin.com/node/10197

Status: 
Closed (fixed)

Comments

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 11:52 Pro Licensee

I don't have any numbers on file vs. partitions (though my understanding is that it's not a big difference), but the goal is to move further towards cloud-based services, including for storage. So, rather than using local storage for everything, we'll be spending time on addressing networked storage. We don't know yet what kinds of storage people want to use, but both Linux and Solaris have some excellent cluster filesystems that would likely be suitable.

Back to the files vs. partition argument...we can't realistically use partitions. They're not particularly safe to fiddle with on a live system, so they'd have to be pre-defined which isn't really fitting the goals of Cloudmin (which includes adaptability of the virtual machines). While Cloudmin can manage a bunch of static virtual machines, we're wanting to build tools for dynamically managed virtual machines that come into existence when needed, sized dynamically to suit the load, and can be shutdown when not in use, etc.

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 13:44

I do have an item on my TODO list to allow the creation of Cloudmin instances that use an existing partition or created LVM logical volume for the root filesystem. However, even though this does improve performance, it also sacrifices flexibility, as you cannot easily move such filesystems between disks or machines like you can with file-based disk images.

Also, you can add an existing partition as a disk to a Cloudmin-managed Xen instance at Resources -> Manage Disks. But this cannot be the root filesystem yet..

Submitted by beat on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 16:30

Jamie wrote:

both Linux and Solaris have some excellent cluster filesystems that would likely be suitable.

Sounds like music to my ears. :-)

Which ones do you have in mind for Linux ?

Looking ideally for a redundant high-availability-type ("networked-RAID") file-system running on 2+ standard servers at a time and not even needing local RAID, as that should be achieved through the gigabit+ network ;-)

Any suggestions ?

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sat, 06/27/2009 - 20:57

I've just finished implementing support for using LVM for Xen guests, for inclusion in the next Cloudmin release.

Submitted by beat on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 06:46

Very Cool :-) Thanks . Does that also include support for the swap partition in LVM ?

Also looking forward to the cluster filesystems support as well. What are your plans regarding those ?

We are still evaluating the available ones for Linux, specially in stability and robustness point of view. It would give cloudMin some very nice possibilities.

Submitted by JamieCameron on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 12:44

Yes, swap is supported.

As for cluster filesystems, I haven't really looked into this .. but as long as they appear to be regular filesystems to Linux, you can use pretty much anything.

Some users I know of have a SAN with LVM, which makes the same LVM logical volumes available to all systems.

Submitted by Issues on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 16:18

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.