Possible convert... with a few questions

[kameleon]

Hello,

I am currently using Xen on some centos 5.5 machines for my virtualization needs. However I am in need of something that is easier to manage with a nice frontend so my search has led me to proxmox. I like what I see so far but have a few questions. Here is a little background on the machines:
machine1: dual E5504, 32GB RAM, 8 2TB drives in a raid6, 4 gigabit ethernet ports
machine2: dual E5506, 24GB RAM, 3 160GB drives in raid5, 4 gigabit ethernet ports
machine3: single E5405, 8GB RAM, 8 300GB drives in raid6, 2 gigabit ethernet ports
machine4: single E5405, 12GB RAM, 8 750GB drives in raid6, 2 gigabit ethernet ports
SAN: Dell MD3200i iSCSI SAN w/ 12 2TB drives in raid6

Now for the questions:
1. I currently am bonding my ethernet ports on the machines and passing vlans across this connection for consumption by the virtual machines. From what I read this should be possible in Proxmox also. Correct me if I am wrong. I am mainly doing this for more throughput but the failover is an added bonus.
2. Is it possible to have automatic live failover if a host machine were to go down or stop responding? In Xen this is possible but it is a pain to setup.
3. We use mostly Fedora, Centos, and Server 2008R2 machines but I don't see this as a problem. Correct me if I am wrong.
4. With my SAN and the TB's of storage on the 3 machines I will have an interesting layout for storage obviously. What I need is a way to have automatic live failover for some core services (mail, dns, web, etc) but not others. So I figure I could put those core services disks on the SAN for easier failover. While I can put some not so critical machines data on the local drives and not have them fail over. Does this sound reasonable?

I plan to use the cluster option in Proxmox for my setup. Thanks in advance for any and all guidance.

 

[udo]

Hello,

I am currently using Xen on some centos 5.5 machines for my virtualization needs. However I am in need of something that is easier to manage with a nice frontend so my search has led me to proxmox. I like what I see so far but have a few questions. Here is a little background on the machines:
machine1: dual E5504, 32GB RAM, 8 2TB drives in a raid6, 4 gigabit ethernet ports
machine2: dual E5506, 24GB RAM, 3 160GB drives in raid5, 4 gigabit ethernet ports
machine3: single E5405, 8GB RAM, 8 300GB drives in raid6, 2 gigabit ethernet ports
machine4: single E5405, 12GB RAM, 8 750GB drives in raid6, 2 gigabit ethernet ports
SAN: Dell MD3200i iSCSI SAN w/ 12 2TB drives in raid6

Now for the questions:
1. I currently am bonding my ethernet ports on the machines and passing vlans across this connection for consumption by the virtual machines. From what I read this should be possible in Proxmox also. Correct me if I am wrong. I am mainly doing this for more throughput but the failover is an added bonus.

Hi,
proxmox use normal linux tools - bonding/vlan/bridging should run like on normal debian-server. Vlan-tagging work well; with vlan-tagging on bonds i don't have any experience.

2. Is it possible to have automatic live failover if a host machine were to go down or stop responding? In Xen this is possible but it is a pain to setup.

only with hand work (i guess it's semiliar to xen). But the next version pve 2.x should have ha-functionality onboard

3. We use mostly Fedora, Centos, and Server 2008R2 machines but I don't see this as a problem. Correct me if I am wrong.

I hear about time-problems on 2008... but there are some postings to get this running.

4. With my SAN and the TB's of storage on the 3 machines I will have an interesting layout for storage obviously. What I need is a way to have automatic live failover for some core services (mail, dns, web, etc) but not others. So I figure I could put those core services disks on the SAN for easier failover. While I can put some not so critical machines data on the local drives and not have them fail over. Does this sound reasonable?

I plan to use the cluster option in Proxmox for my setup. Thanks in advance for any and all guidance.

For live migration you need shared storage - your SAN, or you use DRBD between two nodes. If you use DRBD try first a cluster with only two nodes, because with pve1.x you need on all nodes the same storage (but you can use tricks).

Udo