Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster
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@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question
Hey now! Only I get to be t3h n00b in this thread
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@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question, but was it is that makes it hyperconverged solution compared to "just a bunch of hypervisors" with local storage that are managed together?
Is it vSAN (or equivalent)?
Hyperconverged just means everything is in the same box: storage, compute, network... Vsan has nothing to do with the name.
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@EddieJennings said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
So if HA isn't necessary, you could potentially have nodes with various hardware -- such as in my lab where I've accumulated two different servers with different hardware specs: a Dell R310 and a Dell T420.
Sure. People do that all of the time.
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@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question, but was it is that makes it hyperconverged solution compared to "just a bunch of hypervisors" with local storage that are managed together?
Nothing, that's all hyperconverged is, assuming the local storage piece is shared. All the pieces together in a single layer, managed together.
Just like an IPOD is nothing more than the opposite
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@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Is it vSAN (or equivalent)?
That's the sharing mechanism, yeah. So a Starwind style vSAN, a Gluster style native sharing, a DRBD RAID, etc. Any of those.
A non-converged cluster would be where the only thing connecting them is the management layer.
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@Obsolesce said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question, but was it is that makes it hyperconverged solution compared to "just a bunch of hypervisors" with local storage that are managed together?
Is it vSAN (or equivalent)?
Hyperconverged just means everything is in the same box: storage, compute, network... Vsan has nothing to do with the name.
If you have a single node, that's true. With more than one node, it needs the extra terminology of the storage and management being shared across hosts. And I think that you need the ability to migrate workloads (not HA, just the ability to move them.) That's so basic, no one mentions it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@Obsolesce said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question, but was it is that makes it hyperconverged solution compared to "just a bunch of hypervisors" with local storage that are managed together?
Is it vSAN (or equivalent)?
Hyperconverged just means everything is in the same box: storage, compute, network... Vsan has nothing to do with the name.
If you have a single node, that's true. With more than one node, it needs the extra terminology of the storage and management being shared across hosts. And I think that you need the ability to migrate workloads (not HA, just the ability to move them.) That's so basic, no one mentions it.
Storage is not "shared" as I understand it, hence the "shared nothing" in shared nothing architecture.
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@Obsolesce said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Storage is not "shared" as I understand it, hence the "shared nothing" in shared nothing architecture.
It is totally shared, has to be. All nodes see all storage. It's not "codependent."
HC isn't "shared nothing".
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@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
HC isn't "shared nothing".
Never said it was. I was implying that a big use case of vSAN has been in a shared nothing architecture.
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@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@EddieJennings said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
That's what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around: Making shared storage available without the IPOD.
IPOD isn't the natural way to have shared storage. In your mind, as many people do because of marketing, the idea that storage is consolidated and external is just assumed, and that naturally leads you to an IPOD. Stop trying to consolidate and externalize as part of your sharing, and magically you go to hyperconvergence.
Every standalone server in the world is hyperconverged. . .
Compute and storage all in 1 box.
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@Obsolesce said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
HC isn't "shared nothing".
Never said it was. I was implying that a big use case of vSAN has been in a shared nothing architecture.
vSAN's only real purpose is for sharing. "Shared" is being used two different ways here.
The components aren't shared, the resulting workload is shared.
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@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@EddieJennings said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
That's what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around: Making shared storage available without the IPOD.
IPOD isn't the natural way to have shared storage. In your mind, as many people do because of marketing, the idea that storage is consolidated and external is just assumed, and that naturally leads you to an IPOD. Stop trying to consolidate and externalize as part of your sharing, and magically you go to hyperconvergence.
Every standalone server in the world is hyperconverged. . .
Compute and storage all in 1 box.
That's absolutely correct, understanding that is key to understanding hyperconvergence. It is that aspect that makes HC so powerful. It also helps people to understand why standalone servers are more reliable than IPODs that cost 600% more.
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@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@EddieJennings said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
That's what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around: Making shared storage available without the IPOD.
IPOD isn't the natural way to have shared storage. In your mind, as many people do because of marketing, the idea that storage is consolidated and external is just assumed, and that naturally leads you to an IPOD. Stop trying to consolidate and externalize as part of your sharing, and magically you go to hyperconvergence.
Every standalone server in the world is hyperconverged. . .
Compute and storage all in 1 box.
Exactly. So back to my original comment in that VSAN has nothing to do with HC...
@Obsolesce said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@Pete-S said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
Maybe a dumb question, but was it is that makes it hyperconverged solution compared to "just a bunch of hypervisors" with local storage that are managed together?
Is it vSAN (or equivalent)?
Hyperconverged just means everything is in the same box: storage, compute, network... Vsan has nothing to do with the name.
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To better explain hyper-convergence, think of it like this.
You take several smaller boxes and create a virtual, larger box out of the individual smaller boxes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
3PAR makes it less likely to be redundant, rather than more, I would wager.
3PAR is Active/active symmetric architecture with a full fiber mesh between controllers. Most cases where I've seen issues were tied to firmware on SSD's (Specifically the ~4TB Samsung ones) and people making giant RAID 5 pools, or people trying to move the array while it's running (yes this is dumb).
One really nice thing with the array is it does offer pretty solid vVols support with vSphere so you can manage it as a object system in that regards (No need for VMFS).
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@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
You take several smaller boxes and create a virtual, larger box out of the individual smaller boxes.
When you say that I think of LPAR combining servers (Bull, Hitachi).
HCI is just about doing for networking and storage what virtualization has already done for computing. -
@StorageNinja said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
You take several smaller boxes and create a virtual, larger box out of the individual smaller boxes.
When you say that I think of LPAR combining servers (Bull, Hitachi).
HCI is just about doing for networking and storage what virtualization has already done for computing.That is the goal, do the same thing that virtualization has, but across more boxes with networking.
That's the most simplistic way to explain HCI to laymen.
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@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@StorageNinja said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
You take several smaller boxes and create a virtual, larger box out of the individual smaller boxes.
When you say that I think of LPAR combining servers (Bull, Hitachi).
HCI is just about doing for networking and storage what virtualization has already done for computing.That is the goal, do the same thing that virtualization has, but across more boxes with networking.
That's the most simplistic way to explain HCI to laymen.
Sort of, but it then begs the question of "Didn't SAN and VLAN already do that?" And they did, so it's not a great definitely all on its own.
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@StorageNinja said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
3PAR is Active/active symmetric architecture with a full fiber mesh between controllers. Most cases where I've seen issues were tied to firmware on SSD's (Specifically the ~4TB Samsung ones) and people making giant RAID 5 pools, or people trying to move the array while it's running (yes this is dumb).
It's good stuff, but it's good enough that a lot of people stop considering it as real hardware, and start thinking of it as magic.
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@scottalanmiller said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@StorageNinja said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
@DustinB3403 said in Infrastructure Needed for Hypervisor Cluster:
You take several smaller boxes and create a virtual, larger box out of the individual smaller boxes.
When you say that I think of LPAR combining servers (Bull, Hitachi).
HCI is just about doing for networking and storage what virtualization has already done for computing.That is the goal, do the same thing that virtualization has, but across more boxes with networking.
That's the most simplistic way to explain HCI to laymen.
Sort of, but it then begs the question of "Didn't SAN and VLAN already do that?" And they did, so it's not a great definitely all on its own.
But SAN and VLAN don't when you purchase 1 SAN and X servers on top of it to go back and connect to it.
