Virtual File Server - Options?

[j17sparky]

We are deciding how best to fit our file server into the virtual environment we are currently creating. At the moment it is Win server2003. Our virtual environment is 2 XenServers with 2 mirrored Openfilers as the SAN, via iSCSI. DRBD is set up for the mirroring, and heartbeat for failover.

One option is to use Openfiler itself as the file server. This means one less virtual machine to run, and makes use of the sans otherwise wasted resources. Pros and cons are as per Samba. However i am unsure how clients will react in the event of a san failover.

Another option is to run Server2003 as a virtual machine and mount a seperate iSCSI LUN for the data drive. How is iSCSI in server2003?
Or similaly to the above but with Linux/Samba.


Are there any other options? Or any comments on the above options?

[CyberNerd]

We have a linux virtual server with Samba on a FC SAN.
The Samba shares are mapped directly onto the SAN. If you want failover in this scenario you need to format the filesystem to use GFS so that more that both servers can act as a cluster and read/write to the SAN simultaneously.
We don't bother with this as the load on the fileserver is not high enough - and it takes next to no time to rebuild a nix fileserver.

edit: btw - monkeyx and myself just put up some wiki about samba for homdirectories:
http://www.edugeek.net/wiki/index.ph..._Homedirectory

[j17sparky]

Bumpy!