XOSAN - Getting started

XOSAN, our software defined solution for Xenserver hyperconvergence is now entering phase II. You can now regroup all your existing local storage into a hyperconverged architecture to allow a better data efficiency, fast VM migration, data scalability, enabling High Availability and decrease your storage costs.

XOSAN is in tech-preview

The beta is over, XOSAN is now in tech preview. You can start playing with it and activate a trial with 50GiB limited cluster. Learn more about XOSAN here

XOSAN creation guide

Prerequisites

XOSAN will need a pool with:

• Xenserver 7 or more (7.0, 7.1 or 7.2)
• Local LVM SR with at least 15 GiB of free space on each host
• 2 GiB of free RAM on each host for the XOSAN VM
• a working connection with the updater (same way as the XO trial)
• Our XOSAN pack installed on each hosts (it's automatically deployed during the first XOSAN install)

The pack will install user-space packages and add a new SR type: "xosan". Their will be no other modification. The tool stack has to be restarted to be able to deal with XOSAN (no VM or service interruption). It's also fully automated in the XOSAN install process.

Optional

• An extra/dedicated physical network for storage to deliver high performances
• 10G networks will deliver higher throughput

XOSAN Creation

After you have complete all the requirements, you can install XOSAN itself.

1. Select all local SR you want to participate to the new SR
   

2. Choose the mode you want to test. Disperse or replicate which will allow you to lose one or many host whithout experiencing data loss. To get more information about the XOSAN modes, check our documentation.

3. Test it! Now your XOSAN is ready, you can play with it as much as you want and provide us feedback.

XOSAN Documentation

We have also an official documentation for XOSAN, you will find plenty of informations in it.

Provide your feedback

During all the beta period, it is very important for us to get as much feedback as possible from you. There is many way you can provide us some useful feedback.

• Send us an email with the contact form
• Chat directly with us on the website
• Join the discussion on the forum on the dedicated thread

You need some inspiration regarding the feedback you can make to us? Here are some ideas.

• Report a bug - You think you have found a bug? Take some screenshots and contact us, explaining the process that leads to the bug as much as possible so we can reproduce it and fix it !
• Request a new feature - Something is missing in XOSAN? Explain us what feature you would like to be added into XOSAN. Give us as much context as possible so we can fully understand what you need and the best way for us to deliver it.
• Ask for help, discuss with other users, suggest improvement, share your benchmarks, join the discussion on the community forum!

XOSAN phase III agenda

The Phase I was mostly focused on delivering a strong and powerful back end. The second stage of the beta is focusing a lot more on the user experience. XOSAN is intended to become a turnkey solution. And finally, the last phase (III) will be on tiering (using SSD as cache for your hot files).