Thread: [SSI-users] debian lenny stability, reliability, xen, drbd?
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From: jhonyl <jh...@ne...> - 2009-04-23 12:08:50
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Hi, I am thinking about an OpenSSI two nodes cluster with mirrored disks between the nodes, probably using drbd. I need an uptodate desktop environment, and high availability. I would like to know how stable and reliable is the OpenSSI for lenny. Seeing that it is being kept in the directory called alpha got me a bit worried, since I would like this server to operate without an admin babysitting it. Also, my hardware has a network interface that has a driver only in the latest 2.6.26 kernel, so it probably means that I would have to recompile the kernel for that driver, or could I just install a XEN on the two nodes and run OpenSSI as guest(?) In which case I may also be able to live migrate one of the nodes to the other node for hardware maintenance. Or would the RAM pose a problem in that scenario? (i.e. the first guest will take up all the ram of the machine, so there will be no ram space to migrate the second one in.) In XEN , can I replicate the whole OS via drbd, ie have both nodes boot from the same filesystem? Since drbd is of version 7 in openssi does it not support primary/primary or is it a special version that does? And what about the CFS? say if I put a drbd in XEN, and run OpenSSI from there, can I use OCFS2 or something or do I have to or better use CFS? And last a repeat of the first question, is lenny's openssi in its current version a good solution for high availablity? |
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From: John H. <jo...@Ca...> - 2009-04-25 10:27:07
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jhonyl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am thinking about an OpenSSI two nodes cluster with mirrored disks
> between the nodes, probably using drbd. I need an uptodate desktop
> environment, and high availability.
>
>
> I would like to know how stable and reliable is the OpenSSI for lenny.
> Seeing that it is being kept in the directory called alpha got me a bit
> worried, since I would like this server to operate without an admin
> babysitting it.
>
Frankly OpenSSI is currently not as stable as it could be, though it's
getting better. With an OpenSSI-HA setup you'll definitely be better
protected against hardware problems, but you likely to run into more
problems caused by the software.
However the real reasons I consider my OpenSSI Lenny port "alpha"
quality are:
1. The kernel is my port of the latest OpenSSI CVS (based on Linux
2.6.11) to Linux 2.6.12 (and now Linux 2.6.14). It can't be
considered even "beta" quality until Roger has had time to look at it.
2. The user space hasn't been fully upgraded to Lenny, some bits of
it are still Etch. Some of this is due to our old kernel, we'll
need at least 2.6.18 for full Lenny compatibility, some of it is
due to laziness.
> Also, my hardware has a network interface that has a driver only in the
> latest 2.6.26 kernel, so it probably means that I would have to
> recompile the kernel for that driver,
What's the NIC?
> or could I just install a XEN on the two nodes and run OpenSSI as guest(?)
>
That should be do-able, though I haven't made a Xen domU version of the
OpenSSI kernel for a while. (domU is the Xen terminology for a guest).
> In which case I may also be able to live migrate one of the nodes to the
> other node for hardware maintenance. Or would the RAM pose a problem in
> that scenario? (i.e. the first guest will take up all the ram of the machine,
> so there willbe no ram space to migrate the second one in.)
>
With Xen you can dynamically reduce the amount of memory available to a
domU. (Within limits of course!)
> In XEN , can I replicate the whole OS via drbd, ie have both nodes boot
> from the same filesystem?
>
Uh, maybe. You're making my head hurt.
> Since drbd is of version 7 in openssi does it not support
> primary/primary or is it a special version that does?
>
No, drbd, on OpenSSI doesn't support primary/primary, it doesn't need it
due to OpenSSI's CFS.
If you made a primary/primary drbd at the dom0 (Xen host) level, you
could just tell OpenSSI that it was a shared disk.
> And what about the CFS? say if I put a drbd in XEN, and run OpenSSI
> from there, can I use OCFS2 or something or do I have to or better use
> CFS?
>
CFS would be easier. I have no experience on using OCFS2, so you'd be
pretty much on your own.
> And last a repeat of the first question, is lenny's openssi in its
> current version a good solution for high availablity?
>
Like I say, if you're worried about hardware problems.
|
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From: jhonyl <jh...@ne...> - 2009-04-25 12:18:51
|
Hi,
Thanks for your reply :)
So I understand -
1. Kernel is really alpha,
2. no XEN version of the kernel, so I can't run it as domU/guest
3. User space is a bit Etch ? Does that mean things like older
gnome/evolution/other_apps versions?
If I want to shutdown one node for hardware maintenance, is it possible
to migrate all the processes of that node to another node before the
intentional poweroff? (instead of migrating the whole VM via xen)
Since it is alpha... I may play with it but not install it on mission
critical servers. Is there some version of OpenSSI + OS that is mission
critical quality?
lspci for my NIC is :
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit
Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)
FYI - I thought of xen because of my NICs drivers, and also because I
have 8GB RAM on my two nodes, and the OpenSSI kernel is only 32bit, so
I thought that instead of running one 64bit OS, I can run two OpenSSI
nodes on the same XEN host, and thus utilize all of my RAM.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Hughes <jo...@Ca...>
To: jhonyl <jh...@ne...>
Cc: ssi...@li...
Sent: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:26 am
Subject: Re: [SSI-users] debian lenny stability, reliability, xen, drbd?
jhonyl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am thinking about an OpenSSI two nodes cluster with mirrored disks
> between the nodes, probably using drbd. I need an uptodate desktop
> environment, and high availability.
>
>
> I would like to know how stable and reliable is the OpenSSI for lenny.
> Seeing that it is being kept in the directory called alpha got me a
bit
> worried, since I would like this server to operate without an admin
> babysitting it.
>
Frankly OpenSSI is currently not as stable as it could be, though it's
getting better. With an OpenSSI-HA setup you'll definitely be better
protected against hardware problems, but you likely to run into more
problems caused by the software.
However the real reasons I consider my OpenSSI Lenny port "alpha"
quality are:
1. The kernel is my port of the latest OpenSSI CVS (based on Linux
2.6.11) to Linux 2.6.12 (and now Linux 2.6.14). It can't be
considered even "beta" quality until Roger has had time to look
at it.
2. The user space hasn't been fully upgraded to Lenny, some bits of
it are still Etch. Some of this is due to our old kernel, we'll
need at least 2.6.18 for full Lenny compatibility, some of it is
due to laziness.
> Also, my hardware has a network interface that has a driver only in
the
> latest 2.6.26 kernel, so it probably means that I would have to
> recompile the kernel for that driver,
What's the NIC?
> or could I just install a XEN on the two nodes and run OpenSSI as
guest(?)
>
That should be do-able, though I haven't made a Xen domU version of the
OpenSSI kernel for a while. (domU is the Xen terminology for a guest).
> In which case I may also be able to live migrate one of the nodes to
the
> other node for hardware maintenance. Or would the RAM pose a problem
in
> that scenario? (i.e. the first guest will take up all the ram of the
machine,
> so there willbe no ram space to migrate the second one in.)
>
With Xen you can dynamically reduce the amount of memory available to a
domU. (Within limits of course!)
> In XEN , can I replicate the whole OS via drbd, ie have both nodes
boot
> from the same filesystem?
>
Uh, maybe. You're making my head hurt.
> Since drbd is of version 7 in openssi does it not support
> primary/primary or is it a special version that does?
>
No, drbd, on OpenSSI doesn't support primary/primary, it doesn't need
it
due to OpenSSI's CFS.
If you made a primary/primary drbd at the dom0 (Xen host) level, you
could just tell OpenSSI that it was a shared disk.
> And what about the CFS? say if I put a drbd in XEN, and run OpenSSI
> from there, can I use OCFS2 or something or do I have to or better use
> CFS?
>
CFS would be easier. I have no experience on using OCFS2, so you'd be
pretty much on your own.
> And last a repeat of the first question, is lenny's openssi in its
> current version a good solution for high availability?
>
Like I say, if you're worried about hardware problems.
|
|
From: John H. <jo...@Ca...> - 2009-04-25 12:29:08
|
jhonyl wrote:
> 1. Kernel is really alpha,
Yup.
> 2. no XEN version of the kernel, so I can't run it as domU/guest
I'll see if I can make a Xen domU version of the kernel next week, I
happen to be playing with Xen for some other projects I'm working on.
> 3. User space is a bit Etch ? Does that mean things like older
> gnome/evolution/other_apps versions?
Nowhere near that bad, it's just some of the packages in openssi-lenny
(none of which are particularly user-facing) and all the packages in
openssi-lenny-extras:
Package: gnome-power-manager
Package: grub
Package: hal
Package: libdevmapper1.02
Package: libsane
Package: libsane-extras
Package: udev
> If I want to shutdown one node for hardware maintenance, is it
> possible to migrate all the processes of that node to another node
> before the intentional poweroff? (instead of migrating the whole VM
> via xen)
That's the idea. This is a place where we seem to have some bugs at the
moment, some multi-threaded processes seem to be showing up as
unmigrateable.
>
> Since it is alpha... I may play with it but not install it on mission
> critical servers. Is there some version of OpenSSI + OS that is
> mission critical quality?
Not yet.
> lspci for my NIC is :
> 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit
> Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)
What driver does it need? What kernel version does it come in?
> FYI - I thought of xen because of my NICs drivers, and also because I
> have 8GB RAM on my two nodes, and the OpenSSI kernel is only 32bit, so
> I thought that instead of running one 64bit OS, I can run two OpenSSI
> nodes on the same XEN host, and thus utilize all of my RAM.
Could be done.
|
|
From: jhonyl <jh...@ne...> - 2009-04-25 15:09:21
|
>> lspci for my NIC is :
>> 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit
>> Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)
>What driver does it need? What kernel version does it come in?
In kernel 2.6.26 the driver exist. The module name is atl1e.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Hughes <jo...@Ca...>
To: jhonyl <jh...@ne...>
Cc: ssi...@li...
Sent: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:28 pm
Subject: Re: [SSI-users] debian lenny stability, reliability, xen, drbd?
jhonyl wrote:
> 1. Kernel is really alpha,
Yup.
> 2. no XEN version of the kernel, so I can't run it as domU/guest
I'll see if I can make a Xen domU version of the kernel next week, I
happen to be playing with Xen for some other projects I'm working on.
> 3. User space is a bit Etch ? Does that mean things like older
> gnome/evolution/other_apps versions?
Nowhere near that bad, it's just some of the packages in openssi-lenny
(none of which are particularly user-facing) and all the packages in
openssi-lenny-extras:
Package: gnome-power-manager
Package: grub
Package: hal
Package: libdevmapper1.02
Package: libsane
Package: libsane-extras
Package: udev
> If I want to shutdown one node for hardware maintenance, is it
> possible to migrate all the processes of that node to another node
> before the intentional poweroff? (instead of migrating the whole VM
> via xen)
That's the idea. This is a place where we seem to have some bugs at
the
moment, some multi-threaded processes seem to be showing up as
unmigrateable.
>
> Since it is alpha... I may play with it but not install it on mission
> critical servers. Is there some version of OpenSSI + OS that is
> mission critical quality?
Not yet.
> lspci for my NIC is :
> 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit
> Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)
What driver does it need? What kernel version does it come in?
> FYI - I thought of xen because of my NICs drivers, and also because
I
> have 8GB RAM on my two nodes, and the OpenSSI kernel is only 32bit,
so
> I thought that instead of running one 64bit OS, I can run two OpenSSI
> nodes on the same XEN host, and thus utilize all of my RAM.
Could be done.
|
|
From: John H. <jo...@Ca...> - 2009-04-26 10:01:05
|
jhonyl wrote: > >>> lspci for my NIC is : >>> 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit >>> Ethernet Adapter (rev b0) > >> What driver does it need? What kernel version does it come in? > > In kernel 2.6.26 the driver exist. The module name is atl1e. > I've found the source for the driver, to get around the sourceforge message size limits I've put it on deb.openssi.org, at: http://deb.openssi.org/alpha/l1e-linux-v1.0.1.0.tar.gz (This is a copy of http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/wal2/l1e-linux-v1.0.1.0.tar.gz, md5sum for the tarball above: d83196e507f9b2bea47514ba97fffd6f sha1sum for the tarball above: 1f6a1ee6280add6e4c8d2f110ecd176c6f0e9134) A version compiled for my 2.6.12 kernel can be found at http://deb.openssi.org/alpha/atl1e.ko md5sum: 1a4c1296925751dcbec5bc9d02df7f68 atl1e.ko If you want to compile it yourself: 1. Install appropriate linux-headers package 2. Install kernel-package 3. Install gcc 3.4 4. make the symlink from /usr/src/linux-headers-xxxx to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build (This should be done by the linux-headers package, but for some reason it isn't working). 5. In the atl1e source directory do: make CC=gcc-3.4 make install |
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