KVM vs ZFS

[Šarūnas Burdulis]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 08/21/2015 05:33 PM, Jim McGinness wrote:
> I'm interested in this topic as well.
> 
> I'm putting together a little server for a client and was originally
> going to use ESXi (free) but was disappointed to learn that under ESXi
> using an SSD for a host cache doesn't actually do much. I started
> looking at various KVM or other virtualization possibilities with the
> idea that the ZFS plus an SSD LARC2 might do what I wanted. What's
> considered stable? What's considered most advanced? I've only worked
> with MS Virtual PC, VMware in various stages, and VirtualBox in the past.

I don't know what is considered stable, but here is what has been very
stable in my lone-sysadmin-shop for the past several years at least. A
current-LTS Ubuntu KVM host running current-LTS Ubuntu guests (variable
number, but up to a dozen or so). VM images are stored in Btrfs
partition. Each guest does its own, standard to all our machines, backup
routines, agnostic of it being a VM or not. On the KVM host there is a
cron job that: 1) "freezes" guest filesystems (using QEMU Guest Agent);
2) makes a btrfs snapshot (takes milliseconds); 3) "thaws" guests. Btrfs
snapshot(s) then can be rsync'ed, backed-up as needed.

Best,
Šarūnas Burdulis
http://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iEYEARECAAYFAlXXqtcACgkQVVkpJ1MUn+bWTgCgl2vr/8akw7MIGLCrjgB1x+4E
swMAn2jt901dw1qcvO1XLyi7c+xo4sn4
=MQUV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----