All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Dedicated Server with USB storage?
randvegeta
Member, Host Rep
Anyone interested in servers with the OS installed on a USB stick rather than a traditional SSD or HDD?
The idea being if you don't need much disk space (but rather just need compute power) then it may not matter if the OS is booting off a USB drive. Or, perhaps you want more flexible storage arrangements (network attached) and the USB drive simply boots the main OS, but the network drive is used for storage.
This actually works well for Virtualisation nodes, where the OS (could be very small) is on the on the USB disk and all the VMs are hosted on a NAS/SAN. I don't see why that couldn't also be the same for dedicated servers.
I generally like the idea of diskless servers. But what about the general dedi market? Yay or nay?
@WSS, if this rubs you the wrong way, crack open the lotion! I'll make it better!
Comments
You'll most likely get people only interested in mining unless you offer a bundle of servers that includes one with storage and public and private interfaces.
lollipops
Make it an option or landing page on your site for the customers looking for it. I wouldn't make all my servers like this.
Sounds interesting for sure but disks are extremely cheap these days too. I mean, $20 or so for a 250GB Hard Drive is really cheap. At that cheap of a price, it seems almost pointless to go as low as a USB. Except for unique setups.
Also depends on the monthly price difference of USB vs Disk for the consumer.
I personally don't see it catching on but it will be interesting to see other opinions.
just remove the usb drive, boot from bootp and run on ram.
but please, don't use ceph (yet) for network storage
It's not really about cost of hardware. Disks are cheap indeed, but they are actually a pain in the arse. Disks fail, and using a SAN with built in redundancy is generally easier to manage.
Forget dedicated servers for the moment, and imagine you are running a number of VPS nodes.
You could have each node boot from a USB drive, but the VM storage is all on the SAN. Nodes connected via 10G NICs and the SAN optimised with drives in RAID 10 with SSD caching. Drive failures will be much easier to deal with; especially if your servers are not equipped with hotswapable drive bays.
There are benefits for running dedicated server's storage off a SAN. Like VPS, migration to new machines becomes much easier and faster.
You can also dynamically allocate storage to each physical server. So if a client only need 1TB, the you can provision 1TB from the SAN. Nowadays, much disk space goes completely unused because hosts (like us) over provision. So resource utilisation would probably be more efficient and cost effective.
It's nothing to do with cost. It is very cheap to just stick a cheap drive in a server.
I've not been successful booting any proper OS via the network. Not sure why. Getting something like sysrescue is fine and easy, but something like XENServer... not a chance.
Nah not using CEPH. Using multiple SANs configured in HA and Virtuozzo Storage.
I would prefer having a 32-64GB USB drive in dedicated servers, but, I don't think I would ever feel good about having the OS on a flash drive.
@randvegeta
I agree with you, SAN with built in redundancy is perfect for VPS nodes and in that scenario a USB for the OS would be perfect.
So yes, for SAN setups the USB is great. I just believe that most buyers don't connect their dedicated server to a SAN.
Yes, we can forget dedicated server for a moment. However, the whole point of this thread was to see if the USB would work for dedicated servers buyers.
We know it fits great in SAN setups and some other setups, but in terms of renting out dedicated servers to people I don't see it working unless you target buyers who plan to connect the server to a SAN.
Yes, disks are a pain and I suppose its less risk to host the OS off a USB rather than cheap hard drive. If I was in this position where I had nodes connected to a redundant SAN, I would run the host OS off a new, small SSD rather than a USB. I would still rather have it on a small SSD which don't tend to fail, especially only being used to hold the OS.
a 16GB SanDisk extreme is very decent on IOPS( or any high quality NAND usb stick counterparts : patriot, etc)
Indeed, and more cost effective than an SSD normally. Especially if you don't need much capacity.
I probably should have mentioned that... I would expect people to want external storage in addition to the USB.
SSDs are fine, but perhaps a bit much if you're just hosting the OS (or boot drive) and having everything else of value on the NAS. I mean I suppose it doesnt matter so long as there is hotswap capability. But without hotswap, the USB would be cheaper and easier. You don't sacrifice a huge amount of performance either. You just sacrifice space. But 32, 64, or even 128GB USB sticks are all readily available these days.
Well I suppose the answer is that for dedi users, a traditional disk is preferable.
isn't it easier KVM with dedicated cores and network boot images?
It's useful for things like VMWare, where the system boots from a flash drive and then runs entirely in memory.
I'm likely one of the few people here who've actually run SmartOS.
Well we could just skip the USB, boot from network, run OS off ram and mount a network drive instead..
So no lotion?
In theory yeah. But never been able to get a proper OS to run purely over LAN. What do you use for that?
Pxe boot it.
It's a bit more of "Why do I care what you want to do?" - Pretty sure this very same thread happens at least twice a year, and most folks say "I don't want that", and it goes nowhere.
No. Unless this is something line raspberry pi hosting its dumb.... You might as well go with the $125 nuc style atom boxes with flash based HDs (eMMC). But a thumb drive OS is like what children do when they first learn about Linux it's not production ready.
So do flash drives and they do it faster than you would imagine unless your OS is configured to be very flash friendly. It's an interesting idea but you'd really need some custom OS images to make the drives last longer than a couple months.