Backup on Storwize v3700 with LVM

[adambenk]

Hi,

We have in our company 3 servers IBM x3650M4 (each server has 2 SAS ports) in cluster, and 2 storage devices: IBM STOREWIZE v3700 (both has also 8 SAS ports, I only use the first cannister).
Each server is connected with both storage:
- server1: SAS port 1 connected to Storewize1 SAS port 1
SAS port 2 connected to Storewize2 SAS port 1
- server2: SAS port 1 connected to Storewize1 SAS port 2
SAS port 2 connected to Storewize1 SAS port 2
- server3: SAS port 1 connected to Storewize1 SAS port 3
SAS port 2 connected to Storewize2 SAS port 3
I made the first storage to be "shared LVM storage" in Proxmox for all servers (visible on all servers, VM migration is also possible), and everything is OK.
My question is, how can I make the second storage to be a "shared, visible and backup storage" for all servers.
If I configure LVM on storage2, backup option from Proxmox isn't possible. Also, only raw format for VMs is possible.
If I configure ext4 on storage2 after the backup, the backup files will be corrupted (backup in the same time from 2 servers) or are only visible after the umount/mount command.

Any ideas?

 

[m.ardito]

to save backups, iso, etc, you need filesystem storage type, so NFS for example.
v7000 could do this but I checked and v3700 coudl not have this.
perhaps you could connect another machine (I would not use a vm but...) to the second sas connection to make that a NFS server for the pve cluster nodes. (there are other options but need more machines see http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage_Model#Storage_type_Content)
if it is not for vm file based disks (qcow, raw, vmdk) it could be also a low performance machine perhaps.

Marco

 

[adambenk]

Thank You Marco for the quick answer!

If I connect the second storage for example to a third server, i will lose a lot of speed: SAs:12Gbit/s, LAN: 1Gbit/s.
In the case of backup the time grows exponentially.
The time of restore also will increase, this is not good for us, because Vm-s are 700,900MBytes big, so backup and restore must be as fast as possible.

Is there other solutions?

 

[m.ardito]

well you could mount the volumes through SAS into the nodes, and "local" backup there. but I guess this leaves out the "shared" option, unless the v3700 can add some magic...
or you could script something that after the "local" backup moves/syncs backups together. Or, buy a v7000

you could use the pve ceph option if the nodes are fast enough to run also that, so the cluster will do the replication for you, through the nodes, on SAS volumes
? I am not expert, I could be wrong on this...

Marco

 

[mir]

For backup you could also use a Qnap or Synology NAS with dual nics. If you want lightning fast speed Qnap at least also provide solutions either with 10 Gb nics or an option to add a PCIe x4 with 10 Gb nics. http://www.storagereview.com/qnap_turbonas_ts470_review

 

[adambenk]

I tried the "shared" "local" storage on all servers and it's working: /dev/sdb1 is mounted local and appears on all servers.
Server1 - first backup created: /dev/sdb1/vzdump-qemu-100...vma file. This file is visible on the second server ONLY after the manual intervention: umount/mount /devsdb1
IF unintentionally we make 2 backups in the same time on 2 Servers, the result: vzdump-qemu-100 and vzdump-qemu-101 are visible on the 3rd server after umount/mount with size 0KByte.

Another solution: Cluster file system oc2fs or something else on storage, is it possible?

 

[m.ardito]

Another solution: Cluster file system oc2fs or something else on storage, is it possible?

Gluster storage should be supported, as a storage
other filesystems mounted locally could be used as local storage but pve is unaware of their behaviour, imho.

Marco