[ale] KVM Storage - Seeking advice

[Bryan L. Gay]

I've used LVM method of backing store for VMs for many years, but using
multiple drives, NOT the old-school mirroring of drives. I configure
important LVs to be replicated onto separate PVs:

lvconvert --type=raid1 -m1 volgroupname/lvname /dev/additionalpvname
(careful not to do this to your boot LV unless you know what you're doing -
especially if you're an Arch user)

...haven't needed to use thin provisioning, as there's never been a disk
space concern.

This allows me to get through drive failures. I've had all of my drives in
my server die one at a time. I replace the dead drive with another (bigger)
drive, make it a PV, add it to the VG, and off to the races. I'm still
running the same VMs, on the same server, on the same LVs, but none of the
drives in the server are the original drives. I've had very minimal
downtime. It just depends on HOW the bad drive fails. I've replaced the
motherboard/CPU/RAM, etc., on this server a couple of times, but all I have
to do is power it on and everything boots right back to where it was with
no fuss other than the onboard NIC device name needing to be updated for
the network to come up. The OS has been upgraded from Debian version to
version over the years just to keep it current, which is why I abandoned
CentOS years ago.

On Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 12:43 PM DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the notes.
>
> Decided to try out both methods. LVM does provide some great flexibility.
>
> Moving the img/qcow2 files over would have been a tiny bit easier, plus
> I know exactly how to do that.
>
> On 4/14/19 10:02 AM, Phil Turmel via Ale wrote:
> > On 4/12/19 11:04 AM, DJ-Pfulio via Ale wrote:
> >> Background
> >> ----------
> >> I'm setting up a new KVM VM system. It will run 10-30 VMs, but only 15
> >> will be core.
> >
> > Sounds a lot like my office kit.
> >
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