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= Parallels Cloud '''Virtuozzo Storage ''' is a highly-available distributed storage (Pstoragevirtual SAN) =with built-in replication and disaster recovery.
Parallels Virtuozzo Storage (Pstorage) is a highly-available distributed storage (virtual SAN) with built-in replication and disaster recovery. Pstorage provides a storage virtualization platform on top of commodity hardware with locally attached hard drives and enables the unification of storage into a cluster in scenarios like virtualization with the help of virtual machines (VMs) and/or Containers (CTs[[CT]]s). Pstorage ensures a fast live migration of VMs and CTs across hardware nodes, without the need to copy VM/CT data, and high availability as the storage becomes available remotely.
See a brief [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzW9w-1rg video on YouTube].== Components ===
==OpenVZ limitations==<span style="color[[File:#FF0000">Parallels Cloud Parallels_Cloud_Storage_components.png|650px|top|Virtuozzo Storage is available as a TECHNOLOGY PREVIEW ONLY for OpenVZ users and can't be licensed for production.<br>To unlock for running in production you should upgrade to a full Parallels Cloud Server product (see below).<br>Maximum capacity limited for usage in technology preview mode is 100GB of logical (Containers usable) disk space.<br>After hitting this limit writers can get blocked w/o errors expecting for a limit to be extended, so please avoid hitting the limit (it's not a bug :) ).</span>Components]]
==Pstorage components==Any Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage includes three components:
=Pstorage setup HOWTO=Below HOWTO explains how In order to setup Parallels Cloud Storage (install Pstorage) cluster and run OpenVZ containers stored there. Please noteRPM packages, that it's just a brief HOWTO for quick and easy evaluation of Parallels Cloud Storage (configuring only 1x MDS and CS service) and is not a real manual. We highly recommend log in as root to consult [http://download.parallels.com/doc/pcs/pdf/Parallels_Cloud_Storage.pdf Pstorage manual] and man pages (such as pstorage, pstorage-make-cs, pstorage-make-mds etc.) as it contain a lot of important details on types of SSD drives supported, what are all the recommended configurations, how machines planned to be added to configure big clusters with failure domains the cluster and so onperform the following actions.
==Installing Parallels Cloud Storage software==Set up pstorage yum repository:
In order to install Pstorage RPM packages log in as root to all the machines planned to be added to the cluster and perform the following actions cat << EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/pstorage.repo [openvz-pstorage] name=Virtuozzo Storage for OpenVZ baseurl=http://download.openvz.org/pstorage/current enabled=1 gpgcheck=0 EOF
Download and install the following RPM Install needed packages: pstorage-ctl, pstorage-libs-shared and pstorage-metadata-server. These packages can be downloaded from http://download.openvz.org/pstorage:
wget http://download.openvz.org/pstorage/* yum install pstorage-ctl pstorage-libs-shared pstorage-metadata-server pstorage-chunk-server pstorage-client
Now container with CTID=101 is ready for use and can be started on any Pstorage client node:
Please request more information on upgrading to * [http://www.odin.com/fileadmin/media/hcap/pcs/documents/ParCloudServer6_DataSheet_EN_Ltr_111312.pdf Virtuozzo product datasheet]* [http://www.odin.com/fileadmin/media/hcap/pcs/documents/ParCloudStorage_DataSheet_EN_Ltr_02262013.pdf Parallels Cloud Server on a Storage product datasheet]* [http://download.parallels.com/doc/pcs/pdf/Parallels_Cloud_Storage_Administrators_Guide.pdf Parallels Cloud Storage Administrator's Guide]* [http://www.parallelsodin.com/productsfileadmin/media/hcap/pcs/ product pagedocuments/PCloudStorage_Performance_Results_WP_EN_Ltr_02192013_web.pdf Pstorage performance whitepaper] (see '''Request Information''' button)* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzW9w-1rg Pstorage introduction video]
==Pstorage Links & Documentation==* Parallels Cloud Server [http://www.parallels.com/fileadmin/parallels/documents/hosting-cloud-enablement/pcs/Production_Datasheets/ParCloudServer6_DataSheet_EN_Ltr_111312.pdf product datasheet].* Parallels Cloud Storarage [httpCategory://www.parallels.com/fileadmin/parallels/documents/hosting-cloud-enablement/pcs/Production_Datasheets/ParCloudStorage_DataSheet_EN_Ltr_02262013.pdf product datascheet].* For more information on setting up pstorage cluster please refer to the Parallels Cloud Storage documentation [http://download.parallels.com/doc/pcs/pdf/Parallels_Cloud_Storage.pdf].* Pstroage performance whitepaper [http://www.parallels.com/fileadmin/parallels/documents/hosting-cloud-enablement/pcs/Production_Whitepapers/PCloudStorage_Performance_Results_WP_EN_Ltr_02192013_web.pdf].* YouTube introduction video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzW9w-1rg]
== Features ==<br clear="both">[[File:Parallels_Cloud_Storage_is_a_software_defined_storage.png|300px|right|link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzW9w-1rg|Virtuozzo Storage is a software defined storage]]The main Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage features are listed below:
* No special hardware requirements. Commodity hardware (SATA/SAS drives, 1Gbit+ Ethernet) can be used to create a storage.
* Strong consistency semantics. This makes Pstorage suitable for iSCSI, VMs and CTs running on top of it (unlike object storage such as Amazon S3 or Swift).
* Usable for Containers or exportable as iSCSI, NFS, S3 object storage
* Built-in replication.
* Automatic disaster recovery on hard drive or node failures.
* High performance - comparable to SAN.
See a brief [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oEzW9w-1rg video on YouTube].
<br clear="both">
== Pstorage for OpenVZ limitations ==
{{Warning|
* Virtuozzo Storage is available as a TECHNOLOGY PREVIEW ONLY for OpenVZ users and can't be licensed for production.
* To unlock for running in production, you should upgrade to a full [[Virtuozzo]] product (see below).
* Maximum capacity limited for usage in technology preview mode is 100 GB of logical (usable by containers) disk space.
* After hitting this limit, writers can get blocked w/o errors expecting for a limit to be extended, so please avoid hitting the limit (it's not a bug :) ).
}}
* Metadata server (MDS). MDSs manage metadata, like file names, and keep control over how files are split into chunks and where the chunks are stored. They also track versions of chunks and ensure that the cluster has enough replicas. An MDS can be run in multiple instances to provide high availability. Besides, MDSs keep a global log of important events that happen in the cluster.
* Chunk server (CS). A CS is a service responsible for storing real user data chunks and providing access to these data. A Pstorage cluster must have multiple instances of CSs for high availability.
* Clients. Clients access a Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage cluster by communicating with MDSs and CSs. Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and virtual machines can be run natively, i.e. directly from the Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage cluster. An additional Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage client - can be used to mount Pstorage Virtuozzo Storage as a conventional file system (though Pstorage is not POSIX-compliant). Besides, Pstorage files can be mounted as a block device using the "ploop" feature and formatted as ext4 file system for other needs.
A recommended cluster setup includes from 3 to 5 MDS instances (allowing you to survive the loss of 1 or 2 of MDSs, respectively) and multiple CSs providing storage capacity.
== Setup ==
This HOWTO explains how to setup Virtuozzo Storage cluster and run OpenVZ containers stored there. Please note, that it's just a brief HOWTO for quick and easy evaluation of Virtuozzo Storage (configuring only 1x MDS and CS service) and is not a real manual. We highly recommend to consult [http://download.parallels.com/doc/pcs/pdf/Parallels_Cloud_Storage.pdf Pstorage manual] and man pages (such as pstorage, pstorage-make-cs, pstorage-make-mds etc.) as it contain a lot of important details on types of SSD drives supported, what are the recommended configurations, how to configure big clusters with failure domains and so on.
=== Installing Virtuozzo Storage software ===
===Creating a cluster===
Every Pstorage cluster has a unique cluster name used for remote service discovery and during authorization.
So choose a name for the cluster that will uniquely identify it among other clusters in your network and avoid reusing it on cluster recreate. A name may contain the characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9, dash (-), and underscore (_). Here we will use 'test_cluster' as a cluster name.
====Create metadata servers (MDS)====
Log in to the computers you want to configure as a metadata server as root.
pstorage -c test_cluster make-mds -I -a 10.30.100.101 -r /pstorage/test_cluster-mds -p
This command creates new Parallels Cloud Virtuozzo Storage cluster and metadata server and configures the IP address of ''10.30.100.101'' for communication with this server (replace ''10.30.100.101'' with IP address of your own MDS server). MDS will store its data at location specified by '''-r''' option. The command will also ask you to enter the password for authentication in your cluster.
After you have created the MDS server, start the MDS management service ('''pstorage-mdsd''') and configure it to start automatically when the server boots:
chkconfig pstorage-mdsd on
To create a 2nd and subsequent MDS services on other nodes , dothe following:
1. Login to the node as root.
pstorage -c test_cluster make-mds -a 10.30.100.102 -r /pstorage/test_cluster-mds
====Create a chunk server (CS)====
Log in to the computer you want to configure as a chunk server as root.
The command will ask you the password that you specified when setting up the first MDS server.
Create a CS:
pstorage -c test_cluster make-cs -r /pstorage/test_cluster-cs
chkconfig pstorage-csd on
====Setting up a client====
Log in to the computer you want to act as a client as root.
The command will ask you the password that you specified when setting up the first MDS server.
Create the directory to mount the Parallels Cloud Virtuozzo Storage cluster to and then mount it as a conventional file system:
mkdir -p /pcs
Now you can access your data from all the client machines and ready to run containers!
====Create a container running in the cluster====
Running a container over Pstrage is no different from any other local file system, so below example is just for the reference.
Log in to the computer running OpenVZ and that you have configured to act as a client for the Parallels Cloud Virtuozzo Storage cluster.
Load OpenVZ ploop kernel modules if they aren't loaded yet:
Create a ploop-based container with CTID=101 (put your own template name below):
vzctl create 101 --layout ploop --ostemplate centos-6-x86_64 --private /pcs/containers/101 Now container with CTID=101 is ready for use and can be started on '''any''' Pstorage client node (note, however, that you need to register container first if want to run on node different from creator one):
vzctl start 101
In order to quickly relocate the container to another node (w/o data migration), just stop and unregister it on source node, then register and start on destination.
==Upgrading to Parallels Cloud ServerVirtuozzo ==What is '''[http://www.parallelsodin.com/products/pcsvirtuozzo/ Parallels Cloud ServerVirtuozzo]? Parallels Cloud Server ''' is a unique virtualization server platform combining both hypervisor & containers and container-based virtualization together with innovative storage virtualization . Please request more information on upgrading to Virtuozzo at the [http://www.parallelsodin.com/fileadmin/parallels/documents/hosting-cloud-enablementproducts/pcsvirtuozzo/Production_Datasheets/ParCloudServer6_DataSheet_EN_Ltr_111312.pdfproduct page](look for '''Request Information''' button). == External links ==
