BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer
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I'll go out on a limb and try answering my own question.
@Dashrender said:
Also, when should you and when shouldn't you care?
It's great to start with something like Scale when you're greenfield or when you're standing up a lot of additional resources, but after the fact - why bother? If you have new goals you need to achieve with the old platform, sure, spend the resources designing and moving to a new hyperconverged setup.
But if you don't have new goals, why would/should you spend the money/time changing? -
Now I'm ready for Scott to tear my assumptions to shreds.
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@FATeknollogee said:
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Not magic, no. But the needed tools are all there. For two hosts (and in some cases a few more) you use DRBD technology. That's the small scale stuff.
Once you want to go bigger you move to either Gluster or CEPH, both built in. If you want another tool you can do it, but you have those two enterprise options right out of the gate and they are at the forefront of technologies being used in massive scale systems of this nature, both mature and both very heavily tested.
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@Dashrender said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@FATeknollogee said:
Not to side track this thread (apologies to @BRRABill ), what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
To all you XS experts, what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
Similar to Starwind in the Windows world
XenServer is natively that in the Xen world. Nothing additional needed.
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Of course not, but it doesn't for any platform. If you're setting up a greenfield situation, then you design it from the ground up with XS with single shared storage.
Let's try this again:
In Windows, you can take multiple boxes, add Starwind or Datacore = hyperconverged using local storage (no SAN needed).
How do you do the same thing with XS?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Hyperconverged just seems like a marketing term to me.
In many ways it is, but it does mean something.
So you say it means something but don't tell us what that is.
Please share.
Also, when should you and when shouldn't you care?
I'm just letting you sit and wonder.
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@Dashrender said:
I'll go out on a limb and try answering my own question.
@Dashrender said:
Also, when should you and when shouldn't you care?
It's great to start with something like Scale when you're greenfield or when you're standing up a lot of additional resources, but after the fact - why bother? If you have new goals you need to achieve with the old platform, sure, spend the resources designing and moving to a new hyperconverged setup.
But if you don't have new goals, why would/should you spend the money/time changing?Well you don't change for the sake of change, that's never the answer. You change when the change is more beneficial than the cost of changing, of course.
But why is it beneficial as a concept given apples to apples situations? The goal of HC is that the components are together and managed together as a single entity. This isn't always the right answer, of course, nothing is. But there is a huge amount of benefit to bringing the storage and the computer under the same umbrella with heavy coupling. Remember that everything we have always done has been hyperconverged... any normal server is HC. Every stand alone box with local disks is HC, just on a single node scale. Breaking out the storage is costly, complex and cumbersome. The same holds true as we scale up. What makes sense with one node mostly holds as making sense with more of them.
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@FATeknollogee said:
@Dashrender said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@FATeknollogee said:
Not to side track this thread (apologies to @BRRABill ), what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
To all you XS experts, what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
Similar to Starwind in the Windows world
XenServer is natively that in the Xen world. Nothing additional needed.
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Of course not, but it doesn't for any platform. If you're setting up a greenfield situation, then you design it from the ground up with XS with single shared storage.
Let's try this again:
In Windows, you can take multiple boxes, add Starwind or Datacore = hyperconverged using local storage (no SAN needed).
How do you do the same thing with XS?
DRBD, Gluster or CEPH are all part of the base solution. XS simply lacks GUI interfaces to them.
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@Dashrender said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@FATeknollogee said:
Not to side track this thread (apologies to @BRRABill ), what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
To all you XS experts, what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
Similar to Starwind in the Windows world
XenServer is natively that in the Xen world. Nothing additional needed.
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Of course not, but it doesn't for any platform. If you're setting up a greenfield situation, then you design it from the ground up with XS with single shared storage.
Single shared storage? Better not let Mr @scottalanmiller hear you say that
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@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@Dashrender said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@FATeknollogee said:
Not to side track this thread (apologies to @BRRABill ), what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
To all you XS experts, what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
Similar to Starwind in the Windows world
XenServer is natively that in the Xen world. Nothing additional needed.
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Of course not, but it doesn't for any platform. If you're setting up a greenfield situation, then you design it from the ground up with XS with single shared storage.
Let's try this again:
In Windows, you can take multiple boxes, add Starwind or Datacore = hyperconverged using local storage (no SAN needed).
How do you do the same thing with XS?
DRBD, Gluster or CEPH are all part of the base solution. XS simply lacks GUI interfaces to them.
Thx for the update.
DRBD, Gluster or CEPH are all CLI only?
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@FATeknollogee said:
DRBD, Gluster or CEPH are all CLI only?
Well I've never checked, but they are definitely CLI only where XS is concerned. I would never use a GUI for any of them personally, so not something I have investigated. I'm a CLI person. But I think if they had popular GUIs I'd have heard. So I'm going to tentatively say that no, they are CLI only.
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@FATeknollogee said:
@Dashrender said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@FATeknollogee said:
@FATeknollogee said:
Not to side track this thread (apologies to @BRRABill ), what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
To all you XS experts, what is the "hyperconverged" equivalent in the XenServer world?
Similar to Starwind in the Windows world
XenServer is natively that in the Xen world. Nothing additional needed.
If you had 2, 3 or more XS bare metal installs with local drives, how do you "hyperconverge" all the local disks?
Are you saying with XS the "hyperconvergence" just auto-magically happens?
Of course not, but it doesn't for any platform. If you're setting up a greenfield situation, then you design it from the ground up with XS with single shared storage.
Single shared storage? Better not let Mr @scottalanmiller say that
eh? I didn't say SAN. StarWinds, etc are just that, a single shared storage.
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@BRRABill said:
OK, next question.
How do I get a file onto my XenServer? Say I wanted to copy something over to it?
2 commands you could use to copy a file over to your xenserver box
# wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1234567/file.txt # scp [email protected]:/location/on-remote-server/file.txt /xenserver/path/ -
@larsen161 said:
@BRRABill said:
OK, next question.
How do I get a file onto my XenServer? Say I wanted to copy something over to it?
2 commands you could use to copy a file over to your xenserver box
# wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1234567/file.txt # scp [email protected]:/location/on-remote-server/file.txt /xenserver/path/And of course standard "looks like Windows" tools like WinSCP and Filezilla work great too.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's exactly the same, just restore it and look at the console.
"CONSOLE" ... that is what I was missing.
The way Hyper-V does it must just be a console, not RDP.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Just share a folder from your desktop that you are running XenCenter on. Same as sharing files anywhere in the Windows world. Super simple, all Windows standard tools.
Out of curiosity, how do you do this with the XenServer. Do you set up an account for it to connect to your share?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, that is the proper way to do it both from a XenServer and from a StorageCraft perspective.
Why is that, exactly?
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@scottalanmiller said:
And of course standard "looks like Windows" tools like WinSCP and Filezilla work great too.
Yes, I have no desire to move to the text based world.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Just share a folder from your desktop that you are running XenCenter on. Same as sharing files anywhere in the Windows world. Super simple, all Windows standard tools.
Out of curiosity, how do you do this with the XenServer. Do you set up an account for it to connect to your share?
Haven't done this recently but I think you just share it, and put in the creds in XenCenter.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't done this recently but I think you just share it, and put in the creds in XenCenter.
What creds, though? Your user account? Do you create an account for the XenServer?
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, that is the proper way to do it both from a XenServer and from a StorageCraft perspective.
Why is that, exactly?
Because restoring to specific platform targets rather than generic isn't practical or purposeful. Why import from a overly specific process for one platform when you can have a uniform process for any? If you were purely on just one platform, then it would be six of one, half a dozen of another, but you are not and few people are.
