Virtual Hosting in DoC
The Virtual hosting infrastructure in DoC is based around Vmware Vsphere 4.0 Enterprise Edition. This is a bare metal hypervisor that runs as a small OS, on which 'Guest' Operating Systems run. These 'guests' can be any OS (Windows/Linux/Solaris) and can be configured with any number of configuration choices (CPU/RAM/HDD/Network etc).
Physical Setup
Servers - Four SunFire 4140's provide the server platform for Vmware. They are gull01.doc.ic.ac.uk, gull02.doc.ic.ac.uk, gull03.doc.ic.ac.uk and gull04.doc.ic.ac.uk. Two Sunfire 4240's are also available and will be moved into the cluster in the coming weeks. These are 32GB machines, with quadcore CPU's and 1TB of local storage. These would be used for non critical services. Each machine has either quad or hex core AMD CPU's, 64GB Ram, local Raid5 storage for Vmware, 4 X Gig Nic and 2 X Fiber Channel Cards which connect to the SAN.
SAN - A Sun 6140 Array provides the shared storage for VMware and other services. It is currently installed with 2 shelves of Fiber channel disk and 2 shelves of SATA. There is 3TB spare of Fiber Channel disk (that is, unassigned disk that can be setup in any fashion) and 3TB of SATA disk (also can be setup in any fashion). The SAN has two controllers A/B which run in an Active/Passive mode, allowing fail-over in the event of a switch failure, controller failure or the need to upgrade firmware. There is also a hot-spare in each tray that will automatically be used should a disk fail. The SAN also automatically phones home in the event of any critical failure.
Switches - Two Brocade 200E Switches provide redundant paths to the SAN and attached servers (Vmware cluster, falcon and diver). Each switch provides 16 4GB fiber channel ports and can use short mode or long mode fiber modules.