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Virtual Cluster?

By daring ·
I've been doing research in virtualization, and most of the articles are about consolidating multiple virtual servers into one physical server. My goal is just the opposite: I want to run one virtual server within two physical servers for high availability and possibly load balancing.

I'd like to use a single embedded hypervisor so this is not running on top of a full-blown (bloated) server OS. Shared storage is probably a necessity here.

Is this possible? Recommended? What products are out there for this? Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks.

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novel idea

by CG IT In reply to Virtual Cluster?

The argument is that if one box fails, how's the virtual machine software to know that one box failed and then use the second box, if the virtual software installation is one instance spread across two physical boxes?

One fails, all fails because it's one instance.

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Re: novel idea

by daring In reply to novel idea

I would hope that if such system exists, it is designed for clustering and would work properly in this case. Isn't this how cloud computing or mesh computing works?

Perhaps load balancing is asking too much, but is this possible as just a failover hypervisor-based cluster?

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nope not cloud computing and not mesh computing

by CG IT In reply to Re: novel idea

Cloud computing is the glorified term for Terminal Services or in the really old days, Mainframe computing with dumb clients.

Mesh is just that a mesh of computers/servers/routers/switches and the lot. All physical devices.

While you can mesh virtual machines running on a single hardware instance, and share certain hardware between them such as Network cards, it's not really what was once the definition of mesh.

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The Virtual Server providers

by Churdoo In reply to Virtual Cluster?

are already doing this.

Read up on VMWare DRS/HA for example. With these services, Vmotion is used to automatically migrate a VM (guest) from one physical host to another physical host for reasons of disaster recovery and/or high availablility.

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Yes but....... that's failover and based on round robin

by CG IT In reply to The Virtual Server provid ...

and his idea was having a single instance of VM residing on 2 different physical machines.

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Sweet stuff...

by ---TK--- In reply to The Virtual Server provid ...

Thats what we do with our ESXi hosts... Cluster the Hosts and migrate the guests when needed... Whats sweet about it is you can do it live.. :) LOL, dont ask me how cause I have no idea. I just sit next to our ESXi expert, which he explains stuff to me every now and then when we are slow...

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VM is all fine and dandy but practical applications ...well.

by CG IT In reply to Sweet stuff...

I think the VM proponets believe their own hype and try to apply VM to everything that's computer networking and forget what's really practical.

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2 cents....

by ---TK--- In reply to Virtual Cluster?

Whats the point? (Not to be mean) I mean, I understand your concept, but if you want the availability and load balancing, go with a real cluster...

The point of Virtualization is to consolidate machines, then you can scale out the RAM and CPU time to each virtual machine... and if your looking for the uptime, its no difference MS OS's (even in a vm) still have to be rebooted occassionally, although the reboot is seriously quick...

But if your determinied to do so, Then I would say set up two VM hosts, and then create two VM guests, and cluster them... but they would run faster if they didnt have the VM acting as the "Man in the middle".

I guess, you could argue that it was "safer" to run it your way cause you can create a "snapshot" of each server... and in the event of disaster recovery... you can get it back up quick with the snapshots...

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Thanks!

by daring In reply to Virtual Cluster?

That's a lot of good information. The world of VM is slightly less confusing. Thanks!

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