Subject: Re: Xen and Raidframe
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
From: Stephen Borrill <netbsd@precedence.co.uk>
List: port-xen
Date: 11/04/2006 13:32:26
On Sat, 4 Nov 2006, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

> I'm going to be setting up a new server to run several Xen machines.  I
> plan to have two drives and use (software) RAID for reliability.  I'm
> curious how other people are doing this.
>
> One apparent option, for the production DOMUs, is to have matching
> partitions on each hard drive, and have the DOMUs do RAID themselves.  A
> second is to use a large DOM0 partition, with RAID, and assign a DOMu a
> file in that partition.  This strikes me as slower, but adequate for
> light-load and experimental servers.
>
> Of course, the real question is whether either or both options actually
> work.

Certainly having DOM0 doing RAIDframe works well. We are using it in 
production now and rolling it out to more servers. The major issue is 
convincing grub to deal with RAID1 which isn't too tough but means you 
need to manually install it. Some helpful pointers can be found here:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2006/03/01/0010.html

-- 
Stephen