[Xen-API] XCP and cloud storage advise needed

[Alexander Ivanov <apivanov@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I have rather general question about XCP - Cloud approach, not sure if it's appropriate here but would reallyÂappreciateÂany info.

I'm very new to XCP and the whole Cloud approach, though I've been using Xen 3.4 on CentOS 5 and KVM on CentOS 6 for quite a while. Our company has couple of racks with mostly Dell servers using local drives as VM images, plus few of the servers directly attached to Dell MD3200 (this is basically external RAID storage that can be shared by few servers with HBA cards - up to 8 portsÂper MD3200Âconnected to servers by SAS cables - cheap alternatives to 10G iSCSIÂinfrastructure).

So, now I'm thinking about moving to Cloud infrastructure and my question is if there is any way to make this MD3200 (or MD1220 or whatever otherÂexternalÂstorage it can be using SAS - HBA instead of real iSCSI) available as a SR (storage resource) for my cloud? From what I see so far (I have installed XCP 1.4.90 with CloudStack 3.0.2) looks like the only way to make some resource available to several servers in the cloud is to use iSCSI (or NFS - basically network sharing). But I really hate to spend few grands on 10G NICs and 10G switch (they're still not cheap). If I just stick to Xen (or KVM) without the 'cloud' I can 'share' this external storage connected by SAS cables among 8 serversÂ(which is all my 'cloud')Âfine. Perhaps I just missing something?

I would also appreciate any info from the actual users of XCP/KVM - what would you recommend as a 'cloud orchestration' software? Looks like CloudStack is best choice now (compared to OpenStack and OpenNebula)? I just want to make sure the solution I choose will be relevant in few years from now.Â

Thank you

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