Question about pools
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So we have 2 hosts(no shared storage) currently in a pool, am I correct in thinking our backup jobs would be able to run faster if each host was it's own pool/master? I was told the backups always run via the pool master meaning when I am pulling backups from each box it's limited by the master where if both hosts were in their own pool backups could run from both at the same time.
Are there any other downsides to having each host in it's own pool? It seems like most of the pool features are more for setups with shared storage where you can migrate vm's by moving the memory instead of the storage, I never do rolling pool updates currently because it would take days to migrate our vm's between the two hosts as each host has it's own physical storage containing vm's.
Just looking for some thoughts to make sure I'm not causing myself more trouble or missing some critical info before I change anything.
Both hosts are running Sata SSD storage with 10G links(dedicated management as well as separate link for vm traffic), backup server is just running sas hdd's so not lightning fast but also has a 10g link.
Hosts are managed via XOA.
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Hosts are managed via XOA.
and so is the backup.
while backups are running, monitor your bandwidths, you will see that backup flow through XOA.
So having the two hosts in their own pool will get you no gain in term of backup performance I guess...
You have the advantage of facilitated network configuration with the two hosts in the same pool as network is pushed from pool config. I could see that as a downside when separating the two hosts. -
one way to double backup performance would be to put a XO PROXY on the host where XOA is not.
you could then dedicate some jobs/vms through this XO PROXY, running at the same time as backups running through XOA.the hosts would still be in one Pool, but flow of backups would egress simultaneously from XOA and XO PROXY from the two hosts.
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@Pilow That sounds like it would give the desired results without any pool changes, I'll look into that setup, thanks!
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Just an fyi there is a cost and licensing behind proxy support.
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@acebmxer Good to know, that would change my feelings on that solution. We're a K12 school so money is not overly abundant.
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Contact sales for assistance on pricing.
Another option (Unsupprted) you can deploy the proxyies via a script if using XO from sources. My script has this function. https://github.com/acebmxer/install_xen_orchestra there are other script out there also but same warning applies.
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@acebmxer I may just need to re-evaluate our backup strategy and adjust it so there is more time for the backups, I could also just run the daily delta's, the main issue is the weekly fulls that I run as a precaution, I'm always paranoid about something happening with the daily delta chain and having an unusable backup so i also pull dedicated weekly full backups which take a lot of time to run.
I've also considered running the full backups at different days to spread them out more, sounds like one of those is my best option rather than adding more cost/complexity.
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@acebmxer I may just need to re-evaluate our backup strategy and adjust it so there is more time for the backups, I could also just run the daily delta's, the main issue is the weekly fulls that I run as a precaution, I'm always paranoid about something happening with the daily delta chain and having an unusable backup so i also pull dedicated weekly full backups which take a lot of time to run.
I've also considered running the full backups at different days to spread them out more, sounds like one of those is my best option rather than adding more cost/complexity.
I would absolutely change this backup plan, to running monthly full backups (weekly full backups are overkill for most).
The backup mechanism in XO has improved a ton (since launch). Without more detail, types of VMs, workloads etc it's really difficult for anyone to offer a perfect answer, but most people here would likely agree that weekly full's aren't a benefit here.
Changing the window on your backups is also an option as you mentioned, but that is only shifting when the work is being performed, not the type of work performed.
If you have a 1TB server and you're backing that up daily with delta's and weekly with full backups you're backing up something like 1300 GB every week (of course this depends on your delta data change).
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