Small colo infrastructure for SaaS
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If every VM is Linux based and you are confident that that will remain true, consider an LXC/LXD based infrastructure. Faster spin up, lower overhead.
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I don't see anything wrong with the approach here. This is how a lot of system design should be setup in the first place.
Can you add HA, absolutely with very little added effort. Any mainline Hypervisor includes this at little added effort or cost.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
So a LOT of these decisions will be completely dependent upon you application architectural design. Traditional HA (which you said you don't need) and shared storage (which you think that you do) are based around the applications themselves not sharing data between nodes. But that isn't too much of a challenge for a modern application.
In many cases you would need none of these things. Two VM hosts, yes. But shared storage? Not likely. Let the database replicate and you get HA without needing shared storage or HA from the VM hosts.
That's exactly what I had in mind. The storage in the colo is for backups primarily, hence nearline.
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@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
So a LOT of these decisions will be completely dependent upon you application architectural design. Traditional HA (which you said you don't need) and shared storage (which you think that you do) are based around the applications themselves not sharing data between nodes. But that isn't too much of a challenge for a modern application.
In many cases you would need none of these things. Two VM hosts, yes. But shared storage? Not likely. Let the database replicate and you get HA without needing shared storage or HA from the VM hosts.
That's exactly what I had in mind. The storage in the colo is for backups primarily, hence nearline.
Ah, okay, no problem then.
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In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
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You can even get Near-HA with the pool functionality in XenServer or XCP-NG. Or you can use StarWinds vSAN and have true sHA for little overhead.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
You can even get Near-HA with the pool functionality in XenServer or XCP-NG. Or you can use StarWinds vSAN and have true sHA for little overhead.
For a third party workload, I'd do that. But for a bespoke app, I bet he doesn't need to. You can make it all failover with nothing more than load balancing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
Live migration for service, upgrades and such.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
I'm thinking for those cases of a host catching on fire.
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
You can even get Near-HA with the pool functionality in XenServer or XCP-NG. Or you can use StarWinds vSAN and have true sHA for little overhead.
For a third party workload, I'd do that. But for a bespoke app, I bet he doesn't need to. You can make it all failover with nothing more than load balancing.
True, but its nothing more than a control function to "move" the workload to another host in the pool.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
I'm thinking for those cases of a host catching on fire.
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
You can even get Near-HA with the pool functionality in XenServer or XCP-NG. Or you can use StarWinds vSAN and have true sHA for little overhead.
For a third party workload, I'd do that. But for a bespoke app, I bet he doesn't need to. You can make it all failover with nothing more than load balancing.
True, but its nothing more than a control function to "move" the workload to another host in the pool.
Right, but that's not needed typically with bespoke software. That's a kludge for third party software that isn't well designed.
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@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
Live migration for service, upgrades and such.
When would that be needed? Maybe I'm picturing a very different setup....
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@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
Live migration for service, upgrades and such.
This would be in the case of performing host updates only. You're not gaining true HA at the application layer. If the guest takes a dive, you're still recovering from backup.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
Live migration for service, upgrades and such.
When would that be needed? Maybe I'm picturing a very different setup....
Host updates that require a reboot. Few and far inbetween now-a-days.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
In that case, why the live migration? Should not be needed at all, correct? If one node dies, the other just takes over?
Live migration for service, upgrades and such.
When would that be needed? Maybe I'm picturing a very different setup....
Host updates that require a reboot. Few and far inbetween now-a-days.
Even full reboot of the host is handled in my mental design.
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My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
Why even that much complexity? Only piece that needs replicated normally is the database.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
Why even that much complexity? Only piece that needs replicated normally is the database.
Because you'd need to have a readily available to use infrastructure somewhere that can host said database. Which might be beyond the technical expertise at the table to configure.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
Why even that much complexity? Only piece that needs replicated normally is the database.
Because you'd need to have a readily available to use infrastructure somewhere that can host said database. Which might be beyond the technical expertise at the table to configure.
I don't want to replicate the db to the cloud. I believe it will be too slow.
And I want to have the backup locally available so restores are fast - even if I will also backup to offsite at times.
Colo is 30 minute drive from our office.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
Why even that much complexity? Only piece that needs replicated normally is the database.
Because VM replication is not added complexity. it is easier, by far, than managing individual databases on every VM.
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@pete-s said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@scottalanmiller said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
@dustinb3403 said in Small colo infrastructure for SaaS:
My biggest question is why split workloads, rather than just the two servers, one acting as the active host, the other acting as the backup host.
Remove the NL Storage server entirely.
Perform continuous replication from Host A to Host B, as well as backup offsite.
Why even that much complexity? Only piece that needs replicated normally is the database.
Because you'd need to have a readily available to use infrastructure somewhere that can host said database. Which might be beyond the technical expertise at the table to configure.
I don't want to replicate the db to the cloud. And I want to have the backup locally available - even if I will also backup to offsite at times.
Colo is 30 minute drive from our office.
Well, it will cost more upfront to do, but the solution is still sound. I would recommend an approach like Host A - Master, Host B slave - NLS backup target
Host A performs continuous replications to Host B, as well as Host A backs up to the NLS host on a different schedule.
Should Host A go down, everything is on Host B with a quick startup and you're off to the races.
You'd still have your separate backups to recover from should something even worse occur.
