ESX on the IBM System i

RE: New CEC

dave@NLC — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:50:22 GMT

No, what I found was that the NFS protocol that the system i uses is an old version, I don't remember the version that it uses, and ESX needs a newer version. It would probably work using AIX, but I don't have one to play around with

RE: New CEC

ccandia — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:28:12 GMT

Did you guys ever figure out a way to use the NFS server in IBM i to host storage for ESX?

RE: New CEC

vm400 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:24:51 GMT

I sent you a PM.

RE: New CEC

dave@NLC — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:14:01 GMT

That's why the Integration is such a good solution!

What you could do, is take one integrated Server, use that as your VCB Proxy Server, then you can get everything on that one tape, even if the ESX Hosts are using internal disk.

If you want I can post how I'm doing it all.

RE: New CEC

vm400 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:10:21 GMT

Thanks for all of the input. I would probably be better off to get more space on our SAN and go that route. We were trying to keep everything on the I-series in order to have a single set of backup tapes for disaster recovery.

RE: New CEC

dave@NLC — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:17:30 GMT

Well, that didn't take long. That won't work. ESX requires NFS mount version 3 over TCP. The System i uses an older version, and I'm still running into problems with the IFS not supporting files larger than 4GB in the Integrated Server environment. i.e. in 6.1 you can do file level backups of Linux Servers, but not files larger than 4GB. This was a limitation in previous versions of Windows Integration, so it looks like they still have some things to fix.

The other thing you could do, take a Windows Integrated Server, and use Microsoft's Services for UNIX NFS Server. That does work.

If I come up with any other ideas then I'll let you know.

RE: New CEC

dave@NLC — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:01:32 GMT

I will first say that if I say something "won't work" what I really mean is it's not supported

If you're booting off internal disks then connecting to the iSeries via iSCSI won't work. But one thing you can do if mount an NFS Share. I'd have to brush up on exactly how to do this...I did it back in 2003 when I needed to have an AIX box connect to the 400. And you would want to save yourself some trouble by creating a user named root on the 400, and give it the same password as the ESX Host.

I'll try to find some information on creating an NFS Share on the System i, I can try doing it on my box as well.

And do everything you can to go to 6.1, it's great in every way!!

RE: New CEC

vm400 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:19:12 GMT

Dave,

I am also working with a System I, but it is on 5r4 so not all of the cool stuff is supported. So as a work around for the moment I am just trying to use the I-series as a SAN through the ISCSI adapters. Do you have any input on doing this? I have ESX installed on a 3650 with it's own internal drives, and I want to use a slice of space off of the I-series.

Thanks