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XOSTOR

XOSTOR is the hyperconverged storage solution for XCP-ng: it turns the local disks of your hosts into a replicated, shared virtual SAN, with no dedicated external storage hardware. Technically, XOSTOR is a LinstorSR SMAPI driver developed by Vates, built on LINSTOR and DRBD from LINBIT, with a dedicated web UI in the Xen Orchestra Appliance for deployment and management.

How it works​

A LINSTOR controller runs on one host of the pool, with satellites on the others. Each XCP-ng virtual disk (VDI) is backed by a DRBD volume, replicated across the hosts of the pool. Because the result is a standard shared Storage Repository, everything that depends on shared storage (live migration, High Availability) works as usual.

one shared Storage Repository · seen by every hostHost 1Host 2Host 3local diskslocal diskslocal disks
XOSTOR · local disks become one replicated SRDRBD replication

Key capabilities:

  • Replication count of 1, 2 or 3 copies of each volume, configurable at SR creation (it cannot be changed afterwards).
  • Thick (LVM) or thin (LVM_THIN) provisioning backends.
  • Diskless access: a host without a local copy can still access any volume over the network.
  • Web UI in XOA for deploying and managing the SR, plus the linstor CLI for advanced operations.
note

XOSTOR does not support the QCOW2 disk format yet, so virtual disks on XOSTOR are limited to 2 TiB until the SMAPIv3 port lands (tracked on the roadmap).

Requirements​

  • At least 3 hosts in the pool (DRBD quorum), with a maximum of 7 hosts per pool.
  • A dedicated 10G or faster network interface for DRBD is recommended (the management network can be used, but is not recommended).
  • Sufficient dom0 RAM: 16 GiB can be enough for average pools with around a hundred volumes; monitor memory usage for more intensive use.

Licensing​

XOSTOR is open source (GPLv3). Commercial support is available in Essential, Pro and Enterprise plans, all with a minimum of 3 hosts. See the pricing page.

Learn more​