@r3dpand4 said in Active Directory - Scripting the adding/removal of users to group:
@anthonyh When you say their username matches a certain pattern what do you mean? Whatever the qualifier is it'd have to be perfectly consistent so you can build a RegEx around it for filtering, but it's definitely doable.
Where does OP say username? He wants to match based on some AD attribute, and in his example he mentioned email domain from the email field. Or did I miss something?
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
I am trying to work out the best path from my current, fragile setup, to one that is more reliable and fault tolerant.
For reliable storage in any small to moderate sized setup (that is, under ~20 physical servers in a single cluster) the only good answer is RLS. RLS is the big "magic" answer. How you get to RLS isn't critical. You can do VSAN, native RLS (like DRBD), VSA (virtualized NAS), or whatever. Systems like Scale HC3 or RHEV or HA-Lizard use native RLS via RAIN or Network RAID. Starwind does native on Hyper-V or VSAN on non-Hyper-V. VMware does VSAN. HPE does VSA. All of them work. Don't get caught up in "how" each does what they do, that's not very important. What matters is the RLS.
Your response is like saying "Don't worry about the how to drive, what matters is that the car works and is safe to drive" Perfectly true, but completely useless if you have no idea how to drive and need to get from A to B.
So I get what you are saying, that RLS is what I need, I already knew this (maybe without the acronym), and I am on board with this. The whole point of this post was to try and work out how to get to an RLS setup, and which option would work best for our needs. I am solid on the concept of having replicated data on both hosts, makes perfect sense.
To extend my analogy of the car, I am perfectly aware of why I need a working safe car in order to get from A to B, so I don't need any more info on why it is needed. I now need info on how to drive the damn thing.
The technologies you list all have their pros and cons, so knowing what these are is what I really need to know. How do they handle a node failure? Out of sync data etc? How easy are they to implement? How much do they roughly cost?
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
VSAN would be a management VSA ...
So what happens if it's just the dedicated link that dies? Will all my VMs be running on both hosts on my network (causing a ton of issues)? And how does this setup cope with the data getting out sync if a host fails?
I hate all these terms. LOL. VSAN is just a normal SAN, but virtualized. You can just use SAN and that, hopefully, answers all questions alone.
It does not, and yes I hate these acronyms as well.
How do SANs normally cope with losing connectivity to each other?
I've no clue as I have only ever worked with the one I have, an it is a single unit multipathed to my 2 hosts. So are you saying that real SANs also sync data between themselves?? So the 2 VMs (what I called VSAs) are like 2 physical SANs?
Look I get that VSAN = SAN in all functionality once setup. It's the setup, and the possible ramifications of said setup that I am unclear on.
I am trying to work out the best path from my current, fragile setup, to one that is more reliable and fault tolerant.
Ok, so let me check my understanding here.
VSAN would be a management VSA running on each host, with the local storage assigned to it in 2GB VHD chunks, presumably the VSA would aggregate these chunks. The VSAs will then keep both local SRs perfectly in sync via a dedicated direct link between the hosts, they then allow me to present the total space to the hosts as an iSCSI SR on which I can place the VM VHDs (so it'll be VHDs in VHDs on the host's storage).
If one host goes down, then the HA feature will auto migrate the VM to the running host.
So what happens if it's just the dedicated link that dies? Will all my VMs be running on both hosts on my network (causing a ton of issues)? And how does this setup cope with the data getting out sync if a host fails?
@dustinb3403 said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
@dustinb3403 said in Xenserver and Storage:
@dbeato You can completely skip Windows and use the Linux VSAN controllers.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/announcing-new-linux-based-starwind-virtual-storage-appliance-video
Any idea on how I can download this? When I try all I can seem to find is the Windows installer.
Use the request demo portion here.
Yeah, I did. It just send me the link to the Windows installer.
Otherwise I'd hit up the folks @StarWind_Software to point you in the right direction.
I'll give that a go.
@dustinb3403 said in Xenserver and Storage:
@dbeato You can completely skip Windows and use the Linux VSAN controllers.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/announcing-new-linux-based-starwind-virtual-storage-appliance-video
Any idea on how I can download this? When I try all I can seem to find is the Windows installer.
@dustinb3403 said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
Ok, let me take a step back here.
On the Host you install a VSAN controller VM, you then attach storage to this VM which it will then use as it's VSAN storage space and map that over to the host via iSCSI. Am I correct so far?
Allright, so with Xenserver, the max attached VHDs would be 16, at 2Tb each. And since this VSAN VM is to be used to home all your VMs on the host, you'd need it to have a fair bit of space. So having roughly a 32Tb limit could be a problem. Does this mean you'd need to have a second VSAN VM in that host, therefore upping that limit to 64Tb? And does the VSAN OS handle spanning the data across all 16 VHDs?
Where are you getting your limits from? I literally just posted them and did the math on what you could provide as storage to a single VM.
Xenserver has a limit of 16 VHDs per VM, I know this from experience and it is buried in their docs. I think the 255 you mention is for pure Xen, which I am not running.
EDIT: Apparently the 16 VHD limit is a Xenserver 6.5 and earlier thing. Xenserver 7 is 255. I need to upgrade to 7....
Ok, let me take a step back here.
On the Host you install a VSAN controller VM, you then attach storage to this VM which it will then use as it's VSAN storage space and map that over to the host via iSCSI. Am I correct so far?
Allright, so with Xenserver, the max attached VHDs would be 16, at 2Tb each. And since this VSAN VM is to be used to home all your VMs on the host, you'd need it to have a fair bit of space. So having roughly a 32Tb limit could be a problem. Does this mean you'd need to have a second VSAN VM in that host, therefore upping that limit to 64Tb? And does the VSAN OS handle spanning the data across all 16 VHDs?
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
Then how on earth does that solution scale like they say it does? That means you have a limit of ~32Tb of attached storage (Xen's 16* attached VHD limit and 2Tb per VHD limit). How does the virtual appliance handle getting beyond that?
You have to work around the 2TB limit in another way, but Starwind will use it regardless of how you get it there. So Starwind definitely does not have that limit. But trying to use Xen's 2TB limit system under it will create limits on the Xen side.
I'm sorry of this sounds dense, but what??
(And yeah, I realize when We/I say Xen we mean Xenserver and not pure Xen).
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
Or does the VM has some sort of extra hook into the OS to manage and share the storage?
That would not be VSAN then. It's really SAN. Not something randomly being called SAN. It's just a SAN that isn't on its own hardware.
So the appliance then makes use of the virtual hard drives you assign to it for the storage your host then uses? How do you get past the 2Tb limit in this then??
You don't. Anything on top of Xen is going to have that limit.
Then how on earth does that solution scale like they say it does? That means you have a limit of ~32Tb of attached storage (Xen's 16* attached VHD limit and 2Tb per VHD limit). How does the virtual appliance handle getting beyond that?
*I could be remembering the number of attached HDD limit wrong, but I do recall there is one and it is low, but I ran into with Unitrends backups more than once.
@scottalanmiller said in Xenserver and Storage:
@jrc said in Xenserver and Storage:
Or does the VM has some sort of extra hook into the OS to manage and share the storage?
That would not be VSAN then. It's really SAN. Not something randomly being called SAN. It's just a SAN that isn't on its own hardware.
So the appliance then makes use of the virtual hard drives you assign to it for the storage your host then uses? How do you get past the 2Tb limit in this then??
So you have a VM on each host, and you give it all the local storage. It then allows you to connect the host to it via some protocol (iSCSI, NAS etc)? Or does the VM has some sort of extra hook into the OS to manage and share the storage?
Does it basically just keep the storage volumes on each host synced and identical?
What kind of overhead does this create (ie if I have 6Tb in each server, does that mean I actually only have 3Tb of usable space since I need 2 copies of everything, 1 for each server)?
Is there a need for a dedicated link between hosts for sync traffic?
Starwind's stuff is free, which is cool. Is the paid version particularly expensive? I am thinking support would be a good idea, if only for a year.
This just sounds too easy and/or good to be true. As it sounds like I just need to add drives to my 2 hosts and setup some free software and I'd be set. So I am just making sure I know about as many of the considerations as possible before I run this up the flag pole for a budget.
Can someone give me an overview what a VSAN setup would physically and software wise look like. Sounds like there is a controller involved, would this run on the host? Both hosts? Stand alone hardware?
What is the general cost for Starwind's VSAN stuff? Is it a perpetual licence or a per year thing?
@olivier said in Xenserver and Storage:
Indeed, XOSAN could fill the gap and create a "VSAN" like solution.
However, if you don't plan to get bigger than 2 hosts, you can also take a look a "HA lizard" (which is basically a DRBD block replication between 2 local storages).
Anyway extra questions:
- do you have RAID support in your XS host machines?
- would you like to add hosts in the future? (if you think it's yes, HA lizard is out of the equation)
Yes, there is RAID support in the two hosts. And no I do not think I'll be adding hosts anytime soon. We have plenty of growth in these two hosts.
@danp said in Xenserver and Storage:
How much storage do you need (allow for future growth)? Is HA required? If not, you could likely get away with using XO's Continuous Replication feature.
I think I would like HA enabled, as for capacity, we currently have 12Tb useable on the SAN, and use around 4.7Tb of it (well allocated, actual use is around 4.9Tb). So I am thinking 10Tb or more would suffice.
Don't really have a time frame right now, but probably won't happen till after July 1, so something like 10 - 12 months from now.
So currently I have 2 HP servers that are being used and XenServer hosts. The shared storage is on an HP MSA1040 SAN, connected via 8Gb/s Fiber.
The servers have worked flawlessly since I got them, not a single issue and have only been re-booted for updates and upgrades. I cannot say the same for the SAN. It has gone done about 4 or 5 times, and these outages have highlighted the fragility of my setup.
The HP servers have 24 2.5" drive bays. So I am contemplating filling them with drives and moving away from the SAN, but in order to that I would need the space to be shared between the two hosts.
How can I do that? What would that look like? What kind of cost would it be (outside of buying the drives) and is it a good idea?
Someone mentioned VSAN to me while I was talking about this, but I am not that clued up about VSANs and how they work or how they are put together.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. But please don't lecture me on how bad a SAN is, and that my setup is doomed or that I am an idiot for doing it this way. I am looking for a path forward and not a beratement for things that have long since passed.
I assume that we are are talking about different domains?
If this is the case I completely agree with Scott. Make a list of user, export them all as an csv. Then go through the CSV making sure to assign them to the relevant groups and give them the relevant permissions. The go ahead and create them in the company domain.
I assume that your company domain has some sort of home folder policy? It auto creates the user's home folder on the file server you want to keep in place? If so, then just let it do this as you manually copy the users over. Then simply copy the user's data you want from their old home folders onto the new server with something like Robocopy, but force a permission inheritance when you do so (this way they'll actually be able to access their stuff).
All of that, the exact process would really depend on the number of users you are talking about, sub 200 I'd go this route, but phase it in my department or something like that. Sub 50, do it all at once over a weekend. More than 200 may require a completely different approach.
Permissions on their old file server are going to be a problem, but if you are doing all the copying over a weekend rather than phased in, just use the admin account to grab ownership of the files and open up full permission to that admin account. Then when you copy then over the inherit permissions should then allow only them to access the files (or them and the admin account). I doubt the ownership would be an issue, but if it is there is more than likely a power shell script you can run to replace the ownership of the files to that of the containing folder (ie the user's home folder).
@dashrender said in Help with some Cisco Questions:
@jrc said in Help with some Cisco Questions:
Again, I'm super jelly over here!
Well let me make you more so, our ISP offers us internet for free, all we have to do is get our fiber to them, they will also give us as fast an internet as we want, our only limiting factor is the ridiculous cost that Comcast throws at us for anything over 2Gbs. But the good thing is if we ever need more than 2Gbs (very unlikely I think) it's a simple request to them to up it. E-Rate pays for almost all of it as well.
I know this is going to sound like I'm being JB - but why would you look at another switch with only 2 SFP+ ports? I specifically said another switch with more SFP+ ports. I was going to post a link to a Ubiquiti many SFP+ unit, but figured you wanted to stay Cisco so I didn't bother to look it up.
Fair point, not sure why my mind went to one with just 2. I'd love it if they just made a 3560X with 4 10Gb SFP ports, would be perfect...
Being based for asking the question in a stupid less than clear way, sure I am all for that. But putting words in my mouth? I am not married to keeping the models I have. And at this point I am just researching options, there are a few months before this has to be in place.
I do like the look of the Ubiquiti switch, and it may be an option to consider, not terribly expensive either. But could it handle the traffic from over 3000 devices from 5 different sites?
@nadnerb said in Sodium's new name! Looking for some input!:
Obligatory: HelpDesky McDeskface
I think you meant Helpy McDeskface
But I do like BananaDesk and NaBrO. Not too sure about Camelot though.