Device Types for Virtual Servers

[bdearlove]

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]

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]

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)]

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]

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

[Robert (staff)]

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]

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)]

Have you fixed your issues?