[OpenAFS] openafs fileservers in VMware ESX

[Matthew Cocker]

Please don't mention Dell servers around me. For the last three years we 
have had dell servers with attached storage. It has been a nightmare 
from day one. First we had to have all the scsi disks (100 of them) 
replaced becasue they were incompatible with the Dell backplanes (disks 
were supplied by Dell), then we have had major issues with the Dell raid 
cards not detecting dead raid disks, not rebuilding from a single dead 
disk, the dell powervaults just turning themselves off etc.

In an analysis of our afs down time for the last four years hardware 
faults are the number one roto cause by a huge margin, followed by the 
crypt bug last year.

If we can eliminate downtime for hardware faults we will eliminate our 
number one outage factor. If the experiment does not work we can alway 
change.

Nothing tried, nothing learned.

Cheers

Matt

Rodney M Dyer wrote:
> At 11:51 PM 4/20/2005, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 
>> I've never seen any reason to virtualize an AFS server.  Ever.  The 
>> key is IO
>> bandwith, which isn't increased by virtualization.  You really want 
>> separate
>> PHYSICAL servers for AFS servers.  Virtualization does not give you any
>> benefits due to hardware failure, power failure, or any other 
>> failure.  It just
>> adds overhead.
> 
> 
> I agree.  I've never understood the "big honking box" syndrom.  It has 
> always seemed to me to be an indication of "Pointy Haired Bosses" being 
> marketed to that causes this situation.  The point of AFS is speed, 
> distribution, and scaleability, but you also get redundancy.  Putting an 
> AFS cell on a virtualized server is just IMHO...silly.  I can't see how 
> in the long run you save money with specialized boxes when server PCs 
> from DELL, which can be used for AFS file servers, cost less than $500 a 
> pop.  Of course if you go rack mount, things get more pricey, but still, 
> compared to some specialized box from a proprietary vendor?
> 
> Rodney
>