[ale] Getting rid of VMware

[Tod Fassl]

Yes, I'm in academia. The ISCSI array has 8TB. It's got everybody's home 
directory on it. We did move a whole bunch of our stuff to the campus 
VMWare cluster. But we have to keep our own file server. And, after all, 
we already have the hardware, four 24-core machines, that used to be in 
our VMWare cluster.  There's no way we can fail to come out ahead here. 
I can easily repurpose those 4 machines to do everything the virtual 
machines were doing with plenty of hardware left to spare. And then we 
won't have to pay the VMWare licensing fee, upwards of $10K per year.


For $10K a year, we can buy another big honkin' machine for the beowulf 
research cluster (maintenance of which is my real job).


Anyway, the current problem is getting that ISCSI array attached 
directly to a Linux file server.


On 3/11/21 7:30 PM, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
>
> On March 11, 2021 7:09:06 PM EST, DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>> How much storage is involved?  If it is less than 500G, replace it
>> with an SSD. ;)  For small storage amounts, I wouldn't worry about
>> moving hardware that will be retired shortly.
>>
>> I'd say that bare metal in 2021 is a mistake about 99.99% of the
>> time.
> That 0.01% is my happy spot :-) At some point is must be hardware. As I recall, Tob is in academia. So hardware is used until it breaks beyond repair.
>
> Why can't I pay for virtual hardware with virtual money? I have a new currency called "sarcasm".
>> On 3/11/21 5:37 PM, Tod Fassl via Ale wrote:
>>> Soonish, I am going  to have to take an ISCSI array that is currently
>>> talking to a VMWare virtual machine running Linux and connect it to a
>>> real Linux machine. The problem is that I don't know how the Linux
>>> virtual machine talks to the array. It appears as /dev/sdb on the
>>> Linux virtual machine and is mounted via /etc/fstab like its just a
>>> regular HD on the machine.
>>>
>>>
>>> So I figure some explanation of how we got here is in order. My
>>> previous boss bought VMWare thinking we could take 4 24-core machines
>>> and make one big 96-core virtual machine out of them. He has since
>>> retired. Since I was rather skeptical of VMWare from the start, the
>>> job of dealing with the cluster was given to a co-worker. He has
>>> since moved on. I know just enough about VMWare ESXI to keep the
>>> thing working. My new boss wants to get rid of VMWare and re-install
>>> everything on the bare metal machines.
>>>
>>>
>>> The VMWare host has 4 ethernet cables running to the switch. But
>>> there is only 1 virtual network port on the Linux virtual machine.
>>> However, lspci shows 32 "lines with VMware PCI Express Root"
>>> (whatever that is):
>>>
>>>
>>> # lspci 00:07.7 System peripheral: VMware Virtual Machine
>>> Communication Interface (rev 10) 00:10.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI
>>> Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030 PCI-X Fusion-MPT Dual Ultra320 SCSI
>>> (rev 01) 00:11.0 PCI bridge: VMware PCI bridge (rev 02) 00:15.0 PCI
>>> bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01) [...] 00:18.7 PCI
>>> bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01) 02:00.0 Ethernet
>>> controller: Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller
>>> (Copper) (rev 01)
>>>
>>>
>>> The open-iscsi package is not installed on the Linux virtual machine.
>>> However, the ISCSI array shows up as /dev/sdb:
>>>
>>> # lsscsi [2:0:0:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0
>>> /dev/sda [2:0:1:0]    disk    EQLOGIC  100E-00          8.1
>>> /dev/sdb
>>>
>>>
>>> I'd kinda like to get the ISCSI array connected to a new bare metal
>>> Linux server w/o losing everybody's files. Do you think I can just
>>> follow the various hotos out there on connecting an ISCSI array w/o
>>> too much trouble?
>>>   
>>>
>>>
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