Device Types for Virtual Servers

bdearlove · Fri Jul 17, 2009 10:12 pm

Good Day,
I am in the process of building a Xenserver Virtual Server infrastructure using Starwind as the storage gateway. Regarding the device types:

1. What is the best one to use. I have setup connections to my Xenservers using Image file. Are other options such as Disk bridge, etc a better option?
2. If Image file is the best option, should I use one file per VM or all VM's within one file? Any pros/cons/risks?

Thanks for the help!

securehost · Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:33 pm

Any reply to this. I was wondering the same thing. I als am using XenServer 5.5. Not sure if the documentation given from StarWind is the best way or only way. My first setup was CDP with snapshots. Is this better than mirror? What would be the best for redundancy.
Should we allocate all storage from StarWind and let XenServer partition it when allocating disk storage?

tomk · Sun Jul 19, 2009 2:51 pm

Good question, I sure hope you don't have to create 1 img file per VM, that won't scale at all.

Tom

Robert (staff) · Mon Jul 20, 2009 12:44 pm

Hello everyone.

Using 1 image file per VM is one of the options. The second option is to connect several iSCSI clients to the same targets with a clustered file system on it. Please refer to this post for the details oа using this scenario: http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/ ... t1392.html

Thanks

bdearlove · Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:50 pm

Perfect, thanks. Xenserver should handle the file access appropriately and img files are recommended?

Robert (staff) · Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:59 am

AFAIK Xen have a different cluster handling scenario:

"Unlike VMware, we don't use a clustered file system," like VMware's Virtual Machine File System, said Citrix's Crosby. Instead, XenServer presents an API that storage providers can "plug in to," allowing XenSource to rely on the array's native storage services. "We love it because it's less software for us to write, and because it doesn't break existing storage management processes." (http://searchservervirtualization.techt ... 83,00.html)

Thanks

a7004 · Tue Nov 03, 2009 3:10 pm

Actually I use only img files.

With the "old" version of StarWind (4.2.2), I have same problems with ibv files.

During these day I'm testing StarWind 5.0, I hope to use ibv (CDP, ThinProvisioning, Snapshot...).

Andrea V.

Constantin (staff) · Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:16 pm

Have you fixed your issues?