What is Ganeti

Ganeti is a cluster virtual server management software tool built on top of existing virtualization technologies such as Xen or KVM and other Open Source software.

Ganeti requires pre-installed virtualization software on your servers in order to function. Once installed, the tool will take over the management part of the virtual instances (Xen DomU), e.g. disk creation management, operating system installation for these instances (in co-operation with OS-specific install scripts), and startup, shutdown, failover between physical systems. It has been designed to facilitate cluster management of virtual servers and to provide fast and simple recovery after physical failures using commodity hardware.

Features

Ganeti provides the following features for managed instances:

Support for Xen virtualization:

Support for PVM and HVM instances
Live migration support
Virtual console (on PVM) or VNC (on HVM) to control instances
Support for virtio or emulated devices

Support for KVM virtualization: (from Ganeti 2.0)

Live migration support
Support for fully virtualized instances
Support for semi-virtualized instances (kernel residing on the host)
Support for VNC or serial access
Support for virtio or emulated devices

Recommended cluster size 1-40 physical nodes
Disk management:

Plain LVM volumes
Files (from Ganeti 2.0)
across-the-network raid1 (using DRBD) for quick recovery in case of physical system failure

Instance disk partitioning supported from Ganeti 2.0
Export/import mechanism for backup purposes or migration between clusters, or
Automated instance migration across clusters (since Ganeti 2.2)

Mailing list: ganeti@googlegroups.com for user discussions and ganeti-devel@googlegroups.com for Ganeti development.

Documentation

The documentation for the current version is available on the documentation site: