In scenarios such as these what would be the recommended backup approach: DAS, NAS, Backup Appliance, lower end server, removable disk storage, tapes (intentionally left out cloud)?
Should be separate (physically!) entity non-related to your production cluster. Cheap NAS is OK.
For the average scenario (and I really just mean average) it's Synology or ReadyNAS that I recommend. Easy, supported, cost effective, desktop or rackmount options, well known, good brands, nice features.
I've used their product before. It's pretty cool. If you have multiple servers (and are using the paid version), it will handle load balancing between the servers and all for you, automatically... Last time I tested it was with VMware.
Edit: Only the paid version does the automatic load balancing, IIRC.
And if you look, that EXT3 type is on LVM. Hence the weird confusion 🙂
Yeah that, as I said, is what got me.
So, if you pick EXT is enables thin provisioning by default?
Yes. Because thin provisioning is not actually the option. It's actually just raw LVM vs file based. Files are thin provisioned. LVM raw is not. File based is being called ext3 here.
The Linux system gets the use 99% of the time and needs priority as to performance and what not. The Windows install is just for gaming and is not even my main gaming machine. Just a secondary one. And I've lived with zero Windows access for most of a year, not a big deal.
@dafyre yes, you can create regular machines - they are called "simple machines". But still KVM-VDI is more vdi oriented.
Since the KVM market lacks a good, solid, standard GUI management option like XenServer has in XenOrchestra, that might be a spot that KVM-VDI makes more sense than you might think at first glance.
That is why I was asking. I've got WebVirtmgr on my hosted system and it's... okay. It does the job, at least.
I have recently downgraded from ESXi Essentials to ESXi Free simply by entering a different key. It's the same product.
I'd say you moved between products. It's one product family, they are super similar, but are they the same product? Just semantics, but they are very different.
XO Community and XOA are not the same product. But it's the same code.
Does it have better performance & is it easier to setup?
That is all dependent on how comfortable you are with software / hardware raid.
Even for software RAID experts, hardware RAID is easier.
well yeah - it's practically plug and play - so few options.
Plus, in hardware RAID (assuming the chassis supports it) you get hot swap, something you don't get with Software RAID.
All enterprise software RAID has hot swap and always has. Only FakeRAID doesn't offer that and even that sometimes does. Hot swap is basically ubiquitous. Even ridiculous Windows software RAID has hot swap.
excuse me, I used the wrong term - I meant Blind swap - the lack of need to tell the OS to demount the drive before you pull it from the system.