[OpenAFS] AFS and XEN Virtualization

Jeff Greer j.greer@oclcpica.org
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:16:26 -0500


Thanks for your response Tim.

Given what Tim has said, maybe this is a better question:

Is there any know platform that can do virtualization and AFS given=20
enough hardware power. Any combination of any software + CPU?

My problem is that I have no room for error. If I order equipment it=20
must support what I tell my boss it will support.

I suppose the choices are
XEN + AFS
VMware + AFS

The CPU choices would be (either configuration would come from DELL)
2 CPU - Quad Core Intel=AE Xeon=AE E5345 2x4MB Cache, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz FS=
B
or
2 CPU - AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ Socket 754

Are there any success stories about virtualization and AFS?


Thanks.

Jeff



Tim Spriggs wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
>    I've had varying success with just xen on amd64. In specific, the=20
> kernel will eventually freeze and OOPS. I have had this on two=20
> different configurations, one was a single cpu with 1.5GB ram:
>
>    AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ Socket 754
>
> The other is a Sun x2200 M2, (dual core, dual cpu + 4GB RAM)
>
> The first machine would just die after some time while not really=20
> doing much of anything. The second had issues with bringing a zone=20
> up/down multiple times.
>
> My personal advice is to first test xen on your setup and then add afs=20
> once you have made sure everything works as it should.
>
> -Tim
>
> Jeff Greer wrote:
>> I am in the process of researching migration from windows serves to=20
>> Linux. Currently my windows servers use DFS. I want to know if the=20
>> following will work.
>>
>> 2 replicating failover AFS servers
>> 10 Fedora Core - AFS Client - web servers
>>
>> I would also like to make the AFS servers double as virtualization=20
>> servers for low traffic network services like mail, ftp and low=20
>> traffic webs. The remaining 10 web servers would get their web files=20
>> and Tomcat/Apache/Java installations from the pair of AFS servers.
>>
>> The web applications are caching so once a disk file is read in it is=20
>> cached until the application is restarted. This should help reduce=20
>> the network traffic.
>>
>> All servers would have bonded GIG ethernet.
>>
>> I am planning my AFS servers to use the following hardware
>> Dual Core AMD Opteron 2216, 2x1MB Cache, 2.4 GHz, 1 GHz HyperTransport
>> 8 GIG memory
>> Dual GIG Ethernet NICs
>>
>> My question is this...can AFS and Xen coexist on the same machine well=
?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
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>