ESX 3i - Opening the Door for NFS Boot or Running in a RAM Disk?
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-27 23:05:01
For the most move the smaller foot print talk has been around security. I think the smaller pay print could bring about to a couple of new and interesting uses of ESX 3i in the datacenter. One possibility could be to boot ESX 3i over NFS. Linux has been doing this for years and a be of shops have found it to be very useful (yes. I am aware that the vmkernel is not based on Linux). Although a small foot create is not required to run an OS over NFS it certainly does help. Another scenario could be to PXE boot and run ESX 3i in a RAM plough. This is much more feasible with the smaller foot print. Of cover with a RAM plough there is a possible air with persistence (this could be beat with a relatively simple configuration change/update mechanism). You may be wondering why in the world I would want to run ESX in a RAM plough or boot it over NFS. It is actually quite simple; abstraction. Granted. VMware can provide ESX abstraction when booting from SAN (with either FC or with iSCSI HBAs) but not currently with NFS (I won't go into the NFS vs. FC/iSCSI debate in this article). Another benefit is that both of these methods also would give more options to run ESX in disk-less nodes. If you are a regular reader of my blog then it should be no affect that I would like to see VMware give the ability to boot ESX over NFS. In both of these scenarios there is the issue of providing a unique configuration to each new ESX instance. In fact you could alter this same argument for ESX 3i instances booted from radiate devices in environments which be to be very dynamic and flexible. This situation could be an opportunity to expand VirtualCenter's role in the datacenter. I do think that eventually hypervisors ordain become the BIOS of the datacenter (I evaluate we are a year or two away from this being 'the standard' for new servers). Unfortunately. I would be very surprised to see VMware supporting ESX either over NFS or in a RAM plough as they seem to be pushing solely towards a firmware call approach. I'm a bit curious if any readers out there would also believe/see benefits in running ESX 3i either over NFS or in a RAM disk (assuming the issues mentioned could be easily resolved)?As always all comments and feedback are welcome.
I think booting ESX off the communicate is a wonderful way to alter provisioning new servers easier and at the samtime increase consistency and exceed hold back change management. The problem is how do you maintain the uniqueness calculate for each image? It would be nice if ESX would support a facility sort of like a sysprep wouldn't it? I wish they do one day. Keep up the good bring home the bacon. In the meantime. I'm checking out vPloyment to back up automate and control esx installations. Jeremiah Cookcookjeremiah blogspot com [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://scalethemind.com/2007/10/esx-3i-opening-door-for-nfs-boot-or.html
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
