Re: iscsi

[Kip Macy <kmacy@fsmware.com>]

>
> to clarify, you are talking about netapp solutions here not generic
> iSCSI features, right? as i understand it you can configure block-level
> networked access to virtual disks on a netapp filer via iSCSI, and the
> filer can be configured to do COW for these virtual disks.

Correct.

>
> if this is correct why don't you not just configure each domain to talk
> iSCSI to the filer directly via their virtual network interfaces instead
> of exporting the virtual disks (LUNs) through VBDs from dom0 as your
> initial email seem to indicate? or is the root partition problem the
> issue?
>

For the first pass where I'm only running Linux that will, at least in
principle, work. There are a couple of issues that make that approach
more work. From a configuration standpoint I want the virtual machines
that act as sandboxes for developers to look like a normal machine.
This entails the iSCSI backing looking like a normal disk for all
intents and purposes. Second, I want to be able to map a developer to a
LUN and then build a domain backed by that on an arbitrary physical
machine. This would have the additional benefit of fully anonymizing the
hardware.

In the near future I want to be able to run other operating systems that
do not have iscsi initiator support, nor ever will, in virtual machines.
For this NFS/RAMDISK root is not an option. Thus I need to take the LUN
mapping approach. I'll just have to hope that I can pull the Adaptec
iSCSI HW initator driver into Xen, and that all the configuration tools
will work.


			-Kip


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