I just installed Proxmox 1.5 on two servers and it was indeed as fast and easy as mentioned.
5 to 10 minutes to install and have them clustered.
Brilliant
However…
I did find some things that bothered me that I would like your opinions on.
First I will tell you how I have my systems setup.
This was setup for testing purposes
System setup:
2x HP DL360 G6
1 CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz (Quad core) per machine
12Gb Memory per machine
4x 500Gb SAS Hard disks in RAID 5 per machine
Proxmox setup: (2 running VM’s)
CPU: 1 per VM
Sockets: 4 per VM
4Gb memory allocated per VM
100Gb Hard disk space allocated per VM
Both VM’s are installed on the first Proxmox server.
For the purposes of the post I will name them PS1 and PS2 (Proxmox Server 1 & Proxmox Server 2)
1: Installing Windows Server 2008
Installing Windows Server 2008 took forever. (about 4x as long)
Looking at the CPU load on the Proxmox console it showed almost no CPU usage. (Approx. 0.01 to 2 percent)
Question:
How can this be?
2: CPU Core indication
Each physical machine has 1 CPU with 4 cores.
To my amazement when I first looked at the Proxmox console it said I had “CPU(s) 8 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz”
Question:
Why does it indicate this?
2: CPU Load indication
I found that the CPU load indication in the Proxmox console was confusing.
As I had allocated my 1 CPU and all 4 sockets (cores?) to my first installed Windows server, I found in a CPU stress test that while my Windows server was running at full CPU load it only indicated approx. 35% load in the Proxmox console.
Question:
Why?
Only after installing a second Windows server with the same setup, and them both running at full blast did it go to 97.8%
3: Load Balancing
As mentioned I had both VM’s in CPU stress tests. This was to test what would happen if the CPU load on the first machine, PS1, got above a certain level, if any form of load balancing would occur.
It did not.
When first setting up the cluster it had to synchronize itself. Mistakenly I assumed that it would sync the VM on both physical servers, PS1 & PS2, and that therefore load balancing would occur.
Question:
What is it synchronizing if not the VM?
4: Failover Clustering
After trying the live migration option and getting the message:
The message above made sense if the sync done by Proxmox would not sync the VM to the other physical machine.
Question:
Will it or will it not failover.
(guessing it won’t)
5: Terminology: Cluster
Why is called a cluster if it doesn’t do anything I would expect a cluster to do.
As I see it now, the word cluster in Proxmox is just a term used for Centralized Management.
Please don’t understand me wrong, I really like Proxmox and the ease of use it has.
As I started my rant, I think it’s brilliant.
I would just like to ask if I have done anything horribly wrong, or if it is working as it was designed to do.
What I hoped to avoid was to have to use a SAN solution, but as it seems now I don’t think I can do what I want without it.
This in itself is also a good question:
Will it either load balance or failover if I do use a SAN solution? (or perhaps even both )
I hope that someone has reached the end of my rant and is still awake enough to respond.
Kind regards,
Diablo
5 to 10 minutes to install and have them clustered.
Brilliant
However…
I did find some things that bothered me that I would like your opinions on.
First I will tell you how I have my systems setup.
This was setup for testing purposes
System setup:
2x HP DL360 G6
1 CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz (Quad core) per machine
12Gb Memory per machine
4x 500Gb SAS Hard disks in RAID 5 per machine
Proxmox setup: (2 running VM’s)
CPU: 1 per VM
Sockets: 4 per VM
4Gb memory allocated per VM
100Gb Hard disk space allocated per VM
Both VM’s are installed on the first Proxmox server.
For the purposes of the post I will name them PS1 and PS2 (Proxmox Server 1 & Proxmox Server 2)
1: Installing Windows Server 2008
Installing Windows Server 2008 took forever. (about 4x as long)
Looking at the CPU load on the Proxmox console it showed almost no CPU usage. (Approx. 0.01 to 2 percent)
Question:
How can this be?
2: CPU Core indication
Each physical machine has 1 CPU with 4 cores.
To my amazement when I first looked at the Proxmox console it said I had “CPU(s) 8 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz”
Question:
Why does it indicate this?
2: CPU Load indication
I found that the CPU load indication in the Proxmox console was confusing.
As I had allocated my 1 CPU and all 4 sockets (cores?) to my first installed Windows server, I found in a CPU stress test that while my Windows server was running at full CPU load it only indicated approx. 35% load in the Proxmox console.
Question:
Why?
Only after installing a second Windows server with the same setup, and them both running at full blast did it go to 97.8%
3: Load Balancing
As mentioned I had both VM’s in CPU stress tests. This was to test what would happen if the CPU load on the first machine, PS1, got above a certain level, if any form of load balancing would occur.
It did not.
When first setting up the cluster it had to synchronize itself. Mistakenly I assumed that it would sync the VM on both physical servers, PS1 & PS2, and that therefore load balancing would occur.
Question:
What is it synchronizing if not the VM?
4: Failover Clustering
After trying the live migration option and getting the message:
…I did not dare to try a failover cluster test.
The message above made sense if the sync done by Proxmox would not sync the VM to the other physical machine.
Question:
Will it or will it not failover.
(guessing it won’t)
5: Terminology: Cluster
Why is called a cluster if it doesn’t do anything I would expect a cluster to do.
As I see it now, the word cluster in Proxmox is just a term used for Centralized Management.
Please don’t understand me wrong, I really like Proxmox and the ease of use it has.
As I started my rant, I think it’s brilliant.
I would just like to ask if I have done anything horribly wrong, or if it is working as it was designed to do.
What I hoped to avoid was to have to use a SAN solution, but as it seems now I don’t think I can do what I want without it.
This in itself is also a good question:
Will it either load balance or failover if I do use a SAN solution? (or perhaps even both
)I hope that someone has reached the end of my rant and is still awake enough to respond.
Kind regards,
Diablo
