From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dor Laor Subject: Re: best practices for kvm setup? Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:54:54 +0300 Message-ID: <487C57CE.6070903@qumranet.com> References: <487C3AD0.3080402@esat.kuleuven.be> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org To: Rik Theys Return-path: Received: from il.qumranet.com ([212.179.150.194]:58468 "EHLO il.qumranet.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750993AbYGOH43 (ORCPT ); Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:56:29 -0400 In-Reply-To: <487C3AD0.3080402@esat.kuleuven.be> Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Rik Theys wrote: > Hi, > > I'm looking into virtualizing some of our servers onto two (or more) > physical nodes with either KVM or Xen. What are the 'best practices' > for running virtual _servers_ with KVM? Any good/bad experiences with > running KVM for virtual servers that have to run for months on end? > > I've installed ubuntu 8.04 because it should have KVM as the default > virtualization tool and is the only 'enterprise' distribution with kvm > right now. I used one host to act as an iSCSI target and installed > ubuntu with KVM on two other nodes. I can create a virtual server with > virt-manager, but it seems live migration is not (yet) supported by > libvirt/virsh? So how are other people running their KVM virtual > servers? Do you create a script for each virtual server and invoke kvm > directly? How do you do the live migration then? Launch the script > with an 'incoming' parameter on the target host, and run the migrate > command manually? If libvirt does not support migration than you'll need to automate it yourself, we use a daemon to exec/migrate VMs. AFAIK, except for libvirt* there is no other free tool for it. > Or is there an other (automated) way? I once tried the live migration > on a test host and if I recall correctly, the kvm process kept on > running on the source host even after the server was migrated to the > target? Is that the expected behaviour? > This is works-as-designed, the idea is that a 3rd party mgmt tool get the result of the migration process and closes one of the source/destination. Without 3rd party, the destination cannot continue the source got end-of-migration message and the opposite on failure. > What type of shared storage is best used with KVM (or Xen for that > matter)? Our physical servers will be connected to a SAN. Should I > create volumes on my san and export them to my physical servers where > I can then use them as /dev/by-id/xxx disk in my KVM configs? Of > should I configure my two servers into a GFS cluster and use files as > backend for my KVM virtual machines? What are you using as shared > storage? > We use NFS and it works pretty well, your proposals are also valid options. Just make sure an image is not accessed in parallel by 2 hosts. > Regards, > > Rik > > > Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html