[SGVLUG] Xen

[Rae Yip]

And then the real trouble started when Matt tried to find a case that
accommodated his motherboard and fit a power supply which withstood
the draw from all his accessories.

-Rae.

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Matthew Campbell <dvdmatt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rae is right on.  The biggest problem was matching up the OS, the
> Hypervisor, the Mobo and CPUs to all interoperate to support all the
> technologies.  John pointed out the main sticking points.  I ended up
> going back and forth over nearly a hundred components before I finally
> found a set that would work the way I wanted them too.  It was not
> mentally hard, just tedious.  The worst part was the emotional
> roller-coaster of having to throw out your 'optimal' design again and
> again as you found that the part you just added is not compatible with
> some other bit.
>
> I ended up, like John, going with a SuperMicro motherboard and Intel CPUs.
>
> SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAH+-F-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5520
> Enhanced Extended ATX Dual Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 Series Server
> Motherboard
>
> 2 EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1461-KR GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB
> 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video
>
> 12 Crucial Ballistix sport 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop
> Memory Model BL51264BA1339
>
> OCZ RevoDrive X2 OCZSSDPX-1RVDX0220 PCI-E 220GB 4 x PCI
> Express MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
>
> 10 Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
> 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
>
> 2 Intel Xeon E5645 Westmere-EP 2.4GHz LGA 1366 80W Six-Core Server
> Processor BX80614E5645
>
> Adaptec RAID 6805 2271200-R 6Gb/s SATA/SAS 8 internal
> ports w/ 512MB cache memory Controller Card, Kit
>
> 2 Noctua NH-U9DX 1366 Dual Heat-pipe SSO Bearing Quiet CPU Cooler
>
>
>
> When I got it put together I found that the northbridges were running
> at 90c+.  I had decided to make sure the basics were working before
> tackling cooling and was glad I did as the requirements changed from
> the post-assemble run.
>
> 2 SilenX IXN-40C Copper Chipset Cooler
>
> 6 GELID Solutions FN-PX08-20 80mm Case Fan with Intelligent PWM
> control
>
> 2 LOGISYS Computer SF120 120mm Extreme Quiet Rubber Fan
>
>
> The thing is nearly silent.  Even with all 24 pipelines under full
> load the CPU temperatures register as 'LOW'.  It consumes about 1/5
> the power that the rack of servers it is replacing did.
>
>
>
> Note that the SSD board (not drive) has about three times the
> performance of the best drive formfactor SSDs.  On the other hand MoBo
> support of the cards turned out to be problematic.  They work fine
> under Fedora, but Windoh 7 has caused me tears.  I ended up using the
> card on my desktop as a cache card and running W7 off a 7200RPM HD as
> W7 would not reliably boot off the 10K RAID drives either.  What a
> pathetic product.
>
> Matt
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 7:24 PM, John Kreznar <jek at ininx.com> wrote:
>> In a message purporting to be from matti <mathew_2000 at yahoo.com> but
>> lacking a digital signature, it is written:
>>
>>> I am still looking to see which MB/chipset would support Xen, and
>>> attempting to find a list of chipsets which work with this.
>>
>> The most useful and authoritative answers to this that I found when I
>> chose hardware for xen last year were [1,2].
>>
>> Also, USENET newwsgroup gmane.comp.emulators.xen.user is valuable.  I
>> archive it all, and that's one place I search when I've got a question.
>>
>> An important distinction to keep in mind is whether an unmodified
>> operating system can be run (full virtualization, requiring hardware
>> support), or an operating system tailored for Xen has to be used
>> (paravirtualization).  There's nothing wrong with paravirtual, but
>> sometimes you want to run a system not having the paravirtual hooks.  I
>> ran Linux paravirtual for years on an AMD Athlon.
>>
>> The second important distinction, assuming you have hardware to run full
>> virtual, is whether the hardware supports IOMMU [3,4].  When I chose
>> hardware for xen in early 2010, AMD was not yet delivering a product
>> with IOMMU.  Intel VT-d technology was the only game in town.  I chose a
>> Supermicro 5036T [3], which uses a X8SAX motherboard with an Intel VT-d
>> CPU.
>>
>> With IOMMU, peripheral devices can be selectively "passed through" the
>> xen hypervisor to a virtual machine.  IO memory (such as DMA) is then
>> mapped by the hardware just like CPU-addressed memory, so the virtual
>> machine can efficiently use the device as though it were directly
>> connected.  I use this for sound and to pass through a subset of the USB
>> ports.
>>
>> [1] http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HVM_Compatible_Processors
>> [2] http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HVM_Compatible_Motherboards
>> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization
>> [4] http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo
>>
>> --
>>  John E. Kreznar jek at ininx.com 9F1148454619A5F08550 705961A47CC541AFEF13
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Matthew Campbell
> Storage Solution Consultant
> Storage Platform Engineering Management
> IT | Kaiser Permanente
>