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7 Replies Last post: Nov 1, 2009 7:15 PM by wibni

Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi posted: Oct 21, 2009 12:19 AM

wibni

8 posts since
Aug 21, 2007

Hi,

I've got my first virtualisation project coming up. It's very basic and I wanne keep it that way till I understand more about it.
We're about to implement a new engineering application which I wanne run in VMWare.

I'm about to purchase VMWare vSphere4 Standard and a DELL R710 Server.
It will just be 1 node and we don't have an external storage system so I was thinking of running Windows Storage Server 2008 in 1 VM and the apllication server and database server in 2 more VMs on W2k8 R2 Standard.
So it will be 3 VMS on this ESXi.

It appears that MS does not sell WSS 2008 as a stand alone license - only as OEM together with hardware.
Would anyone here have come accross the same problem already?
I found this article from MS explaining it for WSS 2003. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942868

Has anyone got Windows Storage Server 2008 running on ESXi and can share whether it causes issues as described in the article from MS?
What would be the better alternative? Just run the file server on W2k8 R2 Standard as well or overthink my design?

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

1. Oct 21, 2009 2:31 AM

in response to: wibni

krowczynski

914 posts since
Mar 8, 2009

Has anyone got Windows Storage Server 2008 running on ESXi and can share whether it causes issues as described in the article from MS?
What would be the better alternative? Just run the file server on W2k8 R2 Standard as well or overthink my design?

Hi,

not a good idea to run such a config.

A better one would be to have e.g. another server with some HDD's and make from this server NFS Shares visible for the ESX host!

MCP, VCP

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

2. Oct 21, 2009 9:21 AM

in response to: krowczynski

TimPhillips

120 posts since
Jul 17, 2009

Or if you want to use shared storage in your VM use software iSCSI initiators such as StarWind, Datacore and etc.

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

3. Oct 21, 2009 1:40 PM

in response to: wibni

asatoran

2,924 posts since
Jun 23, 2006

I saw this post and another post mention that MS KB article about issues with WSS as storage for ESX. I am running a HP DL320 NAS with WSS 2003 R2 as an NFS datastore for ESX 3.5, ESXi4.0 and ESX4.0. I must say, I'm surprised by the KB article as the box has been in place for more than a year with no ESX connectivity issues whatsoever. (Maybe I'm just lucky.) I've actually had 3 HD failures during that time that fortunately were covered by the HP warranty. But no connectivity issue Box is also being used as a standard Windows file share. More traffic over file share than ESX NFS, however I do have several VMs that run continuously from the WSS NFS datastore. One of the VMs is used by my coworker several times a week because the Access app that he runs performs better on the WSS NFS VM than when he runs it directly on his physical workstation.

We also have the iSCSI target option for WSS and I have been using that as additional datastores for the ESX hosts. Nothing that's in production. But no connectivity issues either.

On a dev system, I have Windows 2003 R2 as a NFS datastore for ESXi3.5 without any issues either. That box has been in place for close to two years.

The KB article does say that the issue is when more than 16 connections are made to the Windows server. I'm not running that many VMs from each of my NFS datastores so maybe that's why I've been lucky. As mentioned, perhaps use iSCSI, which (presumably) doesn't have that issue. I've also used Starwind on other dev ESXi3.5 systems without any issues either.

..Windows Storage Server 2008 in 1 VM...

@ Wibni, the KB article is not about running WSS in a VM. It's about using Windows as a datastore for ESX. Since WSS is an OEM only product, you'd likely have to just use a "normal" Windows server version.

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

4. Oct 30, 2009 12:18 AM

in response to: wibni

AlbertWT

456 posts since
Apr 7, 2009

Hi,

You could be right I couldn't get MS Windows Storage Server 2008 from anywhere rather than as a bundled OEM features :-| the main reason is that it can do data de-duplication to minimize data growth.

So, how about using plain Windows Server 2008 and put Star winds iSCSI controller driver ?

Kind Regards,
AWT

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

5. Oct 30, 2009 1:59 AM

in response to: AlbertWT

TimPhillips

120 posts since
Jul 17, 2009

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v5-preview

Look at this video! I hope that after it you will pay more attention to StarWind. I`m using it long enought to say, that it`s cool tool!

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

6. Oct 30, 2009 2:08 AM

in response to: TimPhillips

Odysey

2 posts since
Jan 14, 2009

An easier option would simply to install a Windows 2008 R2 server and then implement NFS as the shared storage. You can also implement iSCSI if you want as its built in and can be used as a target host for VM's - if required.

Why do this anyway when you have a single ESXi server?? Simply partition the local disks as VMFS and then allocate VMDK's to the guests, much better option then using network storage for local VMs.

Re: Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

7. Nov 1, 2009 7:15 PM

in response to: Odysey

wibni

8 posts since
Aug 21, 2007

Hi,

Thanks for your replies!

Odysey wrote:
Simply partition the local disks as VMFS and then allocate VMDK's to the guests, much better option then using network storage for local VMs.

I think that's what I've done now. I've got 2 datastores. 1 with RAID 1 containing ESXi and the other RAID 5 containng my VMs.
I'm not completely sure what you mean by "allocating VMDK's to the guests"? Do you mean to create a blank virtual disk and allocate the new disk to a VM somehow - just like adding an additional hard drive to a physical server?
How would I do that? Just create a VM with no OS on it in the vSphere Client?

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