Setting up a NAS with Citrix XenServer

Question

Hi,

Just a quick query on anyone whos worked with XenServer, I want to setup a NAS at home but with virtualization (I've looked into VMWare Server and KVM, I quite like KVM!) but I was told about XenServer 5.5.

I have comomodity hardware (ASUS board, dual core 2.66Ghz CPU with 8Gb RAM), I need to setup a fileserver to house about 2-3Tb worth of data (big chunky video - not porn!). Need to run Linux (preferably CentOS) but also run Windows virtualised for testing.

I was thinking of going the XenServer route, however I want to be able to offer a VM access to the 2-3Tb of HDDs (5 HDD drives) directly so it can do its thing (maybe using FreeNAS).

Would this be possible with XenServer? Or will I have to do more work - and another box - to offer this?

My goals are to use FreeNAS (ZFS!) for the filesserver, CentOS for SVN and aother bits we need to use (LAMP Stack), Windows for our win32 testing all on one box.

I see this iSCSI target bits and get scared.

Answer 1

I think your question should be in serverfault.com. This site is for programming, server fault is more system admin oriented.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Have you seen this one: http://serverfault.com/questions/59913/xenserver-for-nas-and-virtualization ? Maybe, not a 100% answer but at least interesting.