KVM Stands for Kernel Virtual Machine. KVM is a virtualization technology built into the Linux Kernel based on QEMU (Quick Emulator). QEMU allows for virtualizing hardware, all the way from a complete hardware stack to a single device. KVM basically takes QEMU and allows it to use hardware extensions to achieve better performance.
In this article I will outline the steps it takes to get a two node KVM farm running using Open Filer for your storage and Fedora Core 14 for your KVM hosts. By the end of this tutorial you should know how to install and configure KVM, create a virtual machine and perform a live migration between two hosts.
Throughout these instructions I will use gedit for the text editor. you can of course use any text editor you are comfortable with. For example, if you are doing this through SSH you will want to use vi or nano.
When you think of the beginning of Server Virtualization, companies like VMWare may come to mind. The thing you may not realize is Server Virtualization actually started back in the early 1960’s and was pioneered by companies like General Electric (GE), Bell Labs, and International Business Machines (IBM).
When considering your storage systems you will be faced with many choices covering a whole range of price ranges. In this chapter I will cover some of the differences and similarities between consumer grade and enterprise grade equipment.
Disaster recovery can be a difficult thing to plan for. You back up your systems; perhaps you replicate your data to an off-site facility; maybe you even build all redundant systems.
After doing all of these things, what is your goal? It is to get your systems back up and running after some sort of a disaster, such as your building burning down; or an electrical failure in your data center.
Below I have listed a few possible scenarios you may encounter. In these scenarios I outline a few problems you may encounter, but from a Server Prospective. The network recovery is for another article.
Portability of Software is the ability to run the same software on a number of different systems. One of the goals of many software developers are to be able to write the application once, and run it on as many platforms as possible.
Disaster recovery can be a difficult thing to plan for. You back up your systems; perhaps you replicate your data to an off-site facility; maybe you even build all redundant systems.
After doing all of these things, what is your goal? It is to get your systems back up and running after some sort of a disaster, such as your building burning down; or an electrical failure in your data center.
Below I have listed a few possible scenarios you may encounter. In these scenarios I outline a few problems you may encounter, but from a Server Prospective. The network recovery is for another article.
At first glance Network Attached storage, also called NAS is not much different from a Storage Area Network (SAN). They both attach to a network, they both provide storage to computers on their network. There are some major differences between the two storage roles. However, these two things are becoming more and more the same thing.
As there are a variety of tasks you may need to achieve, there are many different ways to connect to your storage system. Each operating system has differing methods for utilizing these protocols, and different operating systems will perform differently with each protocol. For the purpose of this article we are going to focus on two methods of connecting to storage; LUN’s and File Shares. In my examples I will be using Open Filer as the storage device, then various Linux and Windows editions to connect to the storage system.
In this article I will be covering only the client side of things. You can see my article on Configuring Open Filer if you wish to quickly setup the server side of any of the protocols I have outlined in this article. In the future I will post more articles detailing how to create shares without using a pre-packaged solutions like Open Filer.
In this video I explain where to get Citrix Xenserver and how to install it. I use a Virtualbox Virtual Machine in my demonstration, however you would not want to run Xenserver in a Virtual Machine in your production environment. I can't really think of a situation where you would want to do that.
I hope you enjoy the video, and be sure to send me any questions you have either by commenting on this article, or sending me a message via the Contact Us section at the top of the page.
