Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 09:58:27 -0400 From: Paul Kraus <paul@kraus-haus.org> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Gmirror/graid or hardware raid? Message-ID: <334E67CD-AA5D-44B7-AA01-9AC690118E29@kraus-haus.org> In-Reply-To: <CA%2ByoEx-T5V3Rchxugke3%2BoUno6SwXHW1%2Bx466kWtb8VNYb%2BBbg@mail.gmail.com> References: <CA%2ByoEx-T5V3Rchxugke3%2BoUno6SwXHW1%2Bx466kWtb8VNYb%2BBbg@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Jul 8, 2015, at 15:49, Mario Lobo <lobo@bsd.com.br> wrote: > I'm building a server that is going to host VMs for a small e-commerce > site. It's mainly going to be used for testing new solutions/improving = the > current site (on the cloud at this moment) but in the medium to long = run, > the idea is to hold the production site in it. > Since I don't have any experience in running VMs for e-commerce, I = don't > know for sure if my plan is correct or even feasible. >=20 > I want to use FBSD 10 as the host OS and the VMs will run under = Virtual Box. I have been using FBSD / VBox to host both development and production = sites for about 3 years now. None are E-commerce, but some are a pretty = heavy load. > It should be a Dell 430 server (or IBM equivalent) CPU Xeon E5-2630 = with 4 > 2T SATA HDs/16 G Ram/ RAID PERC H730 controller (supported by mesas). I am very, very rarely CPU limited. My biggest throttle is a combination = of Internet connection and disk I/O. > All VMs will run FBSD also with usual Apache/php/Mysql combination. >=20 > I really would welcome suggestions/opinions on what would be the most > efficient way to set up those HDs to hold these virtual disks. >=20 > I thought about zfs but I won't have lots of RAM avaliable. Should I = use > the controller raid? Gmirror/Graid? What raid level? That=92s a tough one=85 A caching RAID controller can make a huge = difference in disk performance, but you also run the risk of silent data = corruption and I have never been really happy with the tools to monitor = HW RAID controllers. With limited RAM the performance of ZFS can suffer. = Does the PERC controller have an NVRAM cache and can it be setup one = drive per presented volume ? I have down that and then used the = presented volumes in a ZFS pool. My latest VM server is an older Supermicro with 2 x X5550 CPU and 80 GB = RAM (the last 16 GB to get to 96 was backordered when I needed to build = it) and 4 x 500 GB WD RE series drives. Since I don=92t need much space = per VM, one pair of the drives is a ZFS mirror for the OS and the other = pair is a ZFS mirror for the VMs. I would really rather stripe/mirror = across multiple disks for the VM images, but the chassis only has 4 = drive slots. This configuration is very fast for FBSD guests as well as = Linux and Windows (Yes, I need them all). But, my biggest concern with E-commerce would be the Internet = connectivity and some type of fault tolerant load balancing. My highest = profile production sites run on SmartOS instances out at Joyent. We are = _hoping_ to have enough business in the next year to justify moving our = own servers into a Tier-1 CoLo, but we can=92t justify the cost (yet)... -- Paul Kraus paul@kraus-haus.org
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?334E67CD-AA5D-44B7-AA01-9AC690118E29>