KVM vs ZFS

[Bruce Dawson]

For this rainy weekend, please consider the following:

I'm constructing a new server and want 2 KVM guest systems on it. There 
are 3 4TB drives on it. At the moment, assume one 4TB drive will be 
reserved for the KVM host. The server has 16GB of RAM.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of:

 1. Putting all disks in a ZFS pool on the host and dividing the pool
    between each guest. Or:
 2. Giving each guest its own disk. (At least one of the guests will be
    running ZFS).

The guests will be:

    * Both guests will be running DNS servers
    * One guest will be running a Postfix/Dovecot mail server (including 
mailman)
    * The other guest will be running a LAMP stack.

Hints:
    * I don't particularly like option 2 as I'll lose the benefits of 
ZFS (snapshot backups, striping, ...)
    * I don't know if the performance benefits of ZFS will outweigh the 
overhead of KVM/libvirt.

--Bruce

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