[sheepdog-users] runtime requirements?

[Hitoshi Mitake]

At Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:58:27 -0400,
Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
> In response to my query:
> > Miles Fidelman wrote:
> >> Hi Folks,
> >>
> >> I've long wanted to try sheepdog in a xen cluster - and kept running 
> >> into the requirement to run qemu and KVM, which in turn requires 
> >> hardware virtualization support - which some of the older machines in 
> >> our cluster don't support.
> >>
> >> Am I correct in my reading of the documentation for the latest 
> >> version of sheepdog that I can run the iSCSI target and access 
> >> sheepdog block devices, without qemu or KVM?  Or am I missing something.
> 
> 
> *Liu Yuan* namei.unix at gmail.com 
> <mailto:sheepdog-users%40lists.wpkg.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5Bsheepdog-users%5D%20runtime%20requirements%3F&In-Reply-To=%3C20140313052730.GC3925%40ubuntu-precise%3E>wrote
> 
> > we don't need hardware virtualization at all. We provide volume abstraction
> > for QEMU. I think you can run sheepdog in dom0 in xen server if QEMU version
> > is new enough. Even if your QEMU dosn't support sheepdog, you can export volume
> > by sheepfs then run it as file for QEMU.
> >
> > >/  
> > />/  Am I correct in my reading of the documentation for the latest
> > />/  version of sheepdog that I can run the iSCSI target and access
> > />/  sheepdog block devices, without qemu or KVM?  Or am I missing
> > />/  something.
> > /
> > Yes, actually we are developing other interfaces like RESTfult kv storage and
> > nfs backend.
> and *Andrew J. Hobbs* ajhobbs at desu.edu 
> <mailto:sheepdog-users%40lists.wpkg.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5Bsheepdog-users%5D%20runtime%20requirements%3F&In-Reply-To=%3C5321BAF0.4040302%40desu.edu%3E>wrote
> > No, that's correct.  I also have two nodes out of six that run sheepdog
> > as storage units in my cluster.  They don't have virtualization support,
> > but they have drives.
> 
> Thanks guys.  Looking forward to trying out Sheepdog.
> 
> Re. "we don't need hardware virtualization at all. We provide volume 
> abstraction for QEMU.
> I think you can run sheepdog in dom0 in xen server if QEMU version is 
> new enough:"
> 
> I don't understand this at all.  As I understand it, QEMU is used in 
> three scenarios:
> a. provides a software virtualization (emulation platform)
> b. provides the device drivers for KVM (which only runs using hardware 
> virtualization)
> c. provides device drivers for Xen, when Xen is running in hardware 
> virtualization mode
> 
> But.. when Xen is running paravirtualized - Qemu isn't involved at all.
> 
> Since I'm running Xen paravirtualized (for speed in all cases, and for 2 
> servers, because they don't have
> hardware virtualization available), QEMU based drivers aren't available 
> - hence my reasons for not
> being able to use Sheepdog in the past.
> 
> iSCSI solves the problem.  So would NFS.

Hi Miles,

This is Hitoshi, a maintainer of iSCSI interface. Sorry for my late
reply, I'm a little bit busy with other work.

You can find an instruction of iSCSI setup here:
https://github.com/sheepdog/sheepdog/wiki/General-protocol-support-%28iSCSI-and-NBD%29

Please feel free to report bugs and troubles :)

Thanks,
Hitoshi