Greetings all,
I am pleased to announce the Alpha availibility of VHACS-VM Demo for
Hardware Virtualized x86_64 running (initially) on VMWare Workstation 6.
The VHACS cluster stack also obviously runs on 'bare-metal' hardware,
but today VHACS-VM is the easiest method to get your own open storage
cloud up and running.
What is VHACS..?
VHACS is a Cloud Storage implementation running on Linux v2.6. VHACS is
an acrynom for Virtualization, High Availibility, and Cluster Storage.
VHACS is a combination of at least eight (8) long term OSS/Linux based
projects, along with a CLI management interface for controlling VHACS
nodes, clouds, and vservers within the VHACS cluster. Here is a quick
rundown of the projects (so far) that make up the VHACS cluster stack:
CLUSTER:
* ) Pacemaker The scalable High-Availability cluster resource
manager formerly part of Heartbeat
* ) OpenAIS The OpenAIS Standards Based Cluster Framework is an
OSI Certified implementation of the Service Availability Forum
Application Interface Specification (AIS)
SERVER:
* ) LIO-Target w/ IBLOCK LIO-Core subsystem plugin for iSCSI
Target mode export
* ) DRBD Distributed Replicated Block device for Network RAID 1
Mirrors
* ) Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) ('vhacs' volume group for
creation of VHACS clouds)
CLIENT:
* ) Open/iSCSI iSCSI Initiator client
* ) Ext3 filesystem
* ) Linux-Vserver Linux Virtualization Layer
I am happy to report that VHACS-VM Alpha Demo x86_64 is running 0.8.15
VHACS code, along with the many other pieces of open source
infrastructure that the VHACS cloud builds upon, and providing
Active/Active H/A with Synchronous Data Replication iSCSI Target ERL=2 /
MC/2 export that makes up the SERVER side of the VHACS cloud. The
CLIENT side of the VHACS cloud is also running an iSCSI Initiator ext3
mounted filesystem with Open/iSCSI on top of Intel 45 nanometer
'Wolfdale' microprocessor silicon and DDR2 800 memory.
Futhermore, using commerically available x86 virtualization technology
on open/closed platforms, I am very happy to report that VHACS-VM 2x
node clusters are now up and running across both OPEN (Linux x86_64) and
CLOSED (win32) x86 platforms on top of the 45nm chips with the VMMU/VMX
parts enabled. The first OS independent storage clouds running on top
of v2.6.25.9-kdb are now a reality.
Here is a link to the code, screenshots, and all the goodies:
http://linux-iscsi.org/index.php/VHACS-VM
http://linux-iscsi.org/index.php/VHACS
The VHACS-VM x86_64 system images, which contain a Debian Etch system
iamges running the very latest compontents that make up the VHACS
cluster stack. Also included in the vhac64-west and vhacs64-east system
images is a complete development environment, including a KDB enabled
kernel that will allow the developer to pause the running image at any
time, examine memory, or setup a breakpoint to track down a problem.
The x86_64 system images currently require hardware x86 virtualization,
please see the wiki for more information about hardware requirements.
They are available from:
http://linux-iscsi.org/builds/VHACS-VM/x86_64/vmware6/
Also, there is great interest to see VHACS-VM running on KVM and QEMU
Virtualization platforms. This is something that should not be too
difficult as long as the virtualization platform supports execution of
x86_64 system images. i386 system images are also in the works to bring
the storage cloud to legacy environments without hardware x86_64
virtualization.
Enjoy,
--nab
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