[Gluster-devel] Does gluster suit my need?

[Alsan Wong]

Hi,

I get several machines, some of them are old (actually, not that old, just 2
to 3 years). I would like to build a big cluster like this:

I'll divide those machines into three groups, computing, storage, backup
storage. As their name, the computing group would be a cluster of physical
machines which is responsible to run application.

Best of all, the computing cluster would run several virtual machines across
the cluster. Thus, the server of the computing cluster would run vmware or
xen, and hosting serveral virtual machines inside (note: the no. of virtual
machines may more then physical machines). The other machines in the cluster
would be diskless (all storage goes to the storage and backup storage
cluster), and act as the processing power supplier and the being the
terminal to the virtual machines.

As I know, such similar architecture can be constructed by using EnSpeed
(another OSS project on clustering, http://www.enspeed.com) easily, but one
of the requirement for me is hard to fulfill - they require all CPUs of the
cluster nodes support VT, and that is not possible in my situation.

I've notice that another project, Kerrighed (http://kerrighed.org) do also
fit the needs of my computing cluster, I might try it later.

So, can I build a such cluster by using GlusterHPC + GlusterFS? or do I need
to combine another solution(s)?

-- 
Best Regards.
Alsan Wong