Proxmox ideal Setup?

[Mrdude]

Hi,

I wanted to know what the best way to setup my proxmox production while they are all new with no changes. i have 2 servers running pve 1.8 and 1 iscsi San box with 2 iscsi ports. I would like to have room to grow to more servers with relative ease.

I would like to have all servers connect to the iscsi San box for:
-Vzdump Backups (Unless there is a better backup/restore solution than vzdump?)
-Virtual Disks
-Iso Storage

The virtual machines would be all KVM. Which type of image format would be best for performance/stability.
-Raw
-Vmdk
-Qcow2

I would also like to have the ability to perform live migrations.

Thanks,
Mrdude

 

[udo]

Hi,

I wanted to know what the best way to setup my proxmox production while they are all new with no changes. i have 2 servers running pve 1.8 and 1 iscsi San box with 2 iscsi ports. I would like to have room to grow to more servers with relative ease.

I would like to have all servers connect to the iscsi San box for:
-Vzdump Backups (Unless there is a better backup/restore solution than vzdump?)
-Virtual Disks
-Iso Storage

The virtual machines would be all KVM. Which type of image format would be best for performance/stability.
-Raw
-Vmdk
-Qcow2

I would also like to have the ability to perform live migrations.

Thanks,
Mrdude

Hi,
if you wan't live migration you have only one choice (it's also my preferred solution): lvm-storage (the vm-disks are in raw on the logical volumes).
Provide space (one or more luns) from your iscsi-san to all pve-nodes, create an lvm on this storage and use them for VMs - that all.

Udo

 

[Mrdude]

Thanks udo,
So i could create one lvm-storage on my iscsi that i just point all of my pve-nodes to? and that would allow live migration? then for iso/virtual disks i would just create a directory on a separate volume of the iscsi?

Currently i have most of my machines on vmdk image format. could i convert them to Raw? would that be a good choice? what is the difference between Raw-Vmdk (pros/cons)?


Thanks so much,

Mrdude

 

[udo]

Thanks udo,
So i could create one lvm-storage on my iscsi that i just point all of my pve-nodes to? and that would allow live migration?

Right - it's very easy, just try and have fun.

then for iso/virtual disks i would just create a directory on a separate volume of the iscsi?

for the iso - the virtual-disks are on the lvm-storage. The isos are good on a nfs-share.

Currently i have most of my machines on vmdk image format. could i convert them to Raw? would that be a good choice? what is the difference between Raw-Vmdk (pros/cons)?

AFAIK is vmdk-format an raw-format. In this case you can simply copy your vmdk-file to the lv of the VM (with dd) - look with "file /path/to/vmdk-file" for the format. Otherwise you must convert the file to raw and copy then with dd to the lv of the VM.

The only effort of vmdk-format is that you are able to put this file back on an vmware-server...

Udo

 

[Mrdude]

Thanks udo, i have just been testing with some extra computers that i had and an iscsi san. just to play around and try and figure a few things out with no consequences .

I have only really one question now. and that is how do i convert a ".vmdk" to a ".raw"? maybe an example of code? my vm images are in the default local storage that proxmox uses.

and then how do you move it to the LVM? would it look like this if my lvm was "Drobo_VM" and the vm was originally on my local drive?

dd if=/var/lib/vz/images/104/vm-104-disk-1.raw of=/dev/Drobo_VM/vm-104-disk-1.raw

Thanks,
Mrdude

 

[udo]

Thanks udo, i have just been testing with some extra computers that i had and an iscsi san. just to play around and try and figure a few things out with no consequences .

I have only really one question now. and that is how do i convert a ".vmdk" to a ".raw"? maybe an example of code?

Hi,

qemu-img convert [-c] [-f fmt] [-O output_fmt] [-o options] [-s snapshot_name] filename [filename2 [...]] output_filename

should work for you.

my vm images are in the default local storage that proxmox uses.

and then how do you move it to the LVM? would it look like this if my lvm was "Drobo_VM" and the vm was originally on my local drive?

dd if=/var/lib/vz/images/104/vm-104-disk-1.raw of=/dev/Drobo_VM/vm-104-disk-1.raw

Thanks,
Mrdude

right,
but use the right lv-name (no .raw).

Udo