Cheap VM cluster (software, storage) ideas

[Ira Abramov]

Quoting Ghiora Drori, from the post of Thu, 05 Mar:
> Hi,
> s3 is not used for block storage!! local ec2 instances storage or EBS drives
> are used.

Yeah, I see that now. The problem was I have never heard of EBS till you
email (not that I could find much about them, but I understand they are
somewhat like an external storage you see as any other disk on the bus,
only you get the ability to share it among many VMs.

Now THAT is interesting. cheap common storage is a real boon and I can
use that for smarter hosting of clusters without shelling out for an
iSCSI or FC machine... All that is left to decide is which clustered FS
is the fastest and most reliable that I can use with this setup.

> As to cost if you are using 4 servers it really does not matter. If you are
> you are using a 100 and
> there number can drop to 50 or go up depending on what you are doing the
> savings are significant.

true, but this is not the case at the moment, unless I give each virtual
web host a separate unique VM, but that would be insane.

Koan: if apache runs just one website, but inside a VM. Is it still a
Virtual host?

Ira.


> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Ira Abramov <Lists-Linux-IL at ira.abramov.org
> > wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Ghiora Drori, from the post of Wed, 04 Mar:
> > > Hi,
> > > Why would s3 bother you ? Its there it does not cost money if you do not
> > use
> > > it it cost fairly little when you do
> > > and it works ok.
> >
> > Well, I was told it's not accassible as a simple filesystem, which means
> > it won't work as shared storage for my current set of apps (various PHP
> > and other tools expecting to find plain files in the directories they
> > put them in...
> >
> > > The only thing you will need s3 for is to store images of systems you
> > want
> > > to launch, you could use public images
> > > but the cost of keeping private onse in s3 is negligible and this gives
> > much
> > > more flexiblity in creating custom servers.
> >
> > Well, the hosting guy has 5 very different servers hosted right now. a
> > winXP for Marcom, a couple of production Debian LAMPs, a test LAMP and a
> > spare
> > machine for sensitive sites. I think we are talking about too many
> > details to try and just dump them P2V on a cloud and hope for the
> > best...
> >
> > > You do have to learn how to handle it aka instances can die and then
> > > you loose their disk this has been rare lately, was more common a few
> > > month ago. The EBS drives however do not die with the machine so data
> >
> > are you trying to cheer me up? :) I have machines with 500-600 days of
> > uptime here, I don't need to move a bunch of Israeli sites to a far away
> > cloud that occasionally has a lightning storm as well.
> >
> > > You can put mysql, or any other software in images or load them when
> > > the instance is up.  You can run RedHat, Gentoo, Ubuntu or even
> > > Windows...  You can scale up and down the number of your servers and
> > > EBS disks as needed.
> >
> > If your servers were built for clustering in the first place, maybe.
> > This is not a case of "Drag'n'drop", as you can understand :)
> >
> > > Make an account and play with it!!  A small machine/instance (32 bits)
> > > is 10 cents an hour. If you cannot afford that you are not really
> > > commercial :) A few minor calculations should give you the correct
> > > cost numbers.
> >
> > 10 cents an hour are $2.4 a day or about $75 a month. this is more or
> > less what the guy is paying in Israel now, and he gets less latency (all
> > Hebrew sites and wanted only by Israelis), more disk space, etc.
> >
> > I guess the only real plus of histing the apps there is the Fun in the
> > SAN.
> >
> > > As sysadmin using it in a real web company it is very good, has a
> > > learning curve like everything else.
> >
> > yeah, only he's expecting definite answers from me, and Now I have to
> > talk him into doing a pilot because I don't have all the correct
> > answers. But that's the way the Internet works, right? :-)
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ira.
> >
> > --
> > Santa's little helper
> > Ira Abramov
> > http://ira.abramov.org/email/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linux-il mailing list
> > Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Constant change is here to stay!

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-- 
Another word for "awesome"
Ira Abramov
http://ira.abramov.org/email/