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Trollking
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ESX 3.5 Update 2 on Windows Server 2008 NFS?

Hi,

I've a customer using a "Storage" System (it's like a Server with a RAID Controller and lots of disks in external enclosures and you can install what you like) and i'd like to do as much as possible with on board utilities as the project has a tight budget and does not need high performance (just reliability - and yes i know thats not the best way,...)

I thought about installing Windows 2008 with NFS and using it as an VMDK Store. Another option is to install Windows 2008 and an additional Software iSCSI Target (like Starwind) to provide the disks. But i'm unsure as the NFS would be built in (but MS???) and the iSCSI Target would need a license (and as far as i see SW is installing IBVolumes on a classical NTFS Volume is that really usable? Anybody real world experience?) . I do not want to use something like OpenFiler or other free tools... (as i do not really believe in those..)

I've read about Using Windows 2003 with Services for Unix which is an option but i'd rather stick to newer versions - can anybody shed some light on this?

BG Christoph

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Texiwill
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Hello,

I find Openfiler 2.3 works just fine. The web interface is quite easy to use. I actually use it to demo products..... Easier to travel around with me. But it is a good stable product and yes there is support for it I believe.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill

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Texiwill
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Hello,

NFS/iSCSI on Windows is somewhat problematic. Yes it will work but it is not a great performer.

I use Openfiler and you can get support for it, so it is a valid solution. While you may not 'agree' or 'like' OSS implementations, as long as you can get support, it should not make a difference.

Ideally if you are using NFS/iSCSI you will want a NFS/iSCSI Appliance like Equilogic, NetApp, etc.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
Trollking
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Hi,

thanks for your answer I really appreciate. About the OSS solutions - I didn't want to say it's not a good solution I just didn't know that openfiler has a real support team behind. As I'm the one in need of support in case of a problem I just wanted to have someone able to help me.

The Appliance (I love Netapp) was my first idea, but the hardware was already bought by the customer so we have to use it. (we told the customer that we may end up with a not supported solution - he just wanted to get it running and signed a paper not to blame us for any troubles afterwards.)

I've seen that V2.2 of Openfiler is community supported / tested - does anyone have experience with the new 2.3? Any best practices how to implement if 2 ESX Server will participated and running around 10 VMs in a HA / DRS Cluster with around 36 disks running in a cage connected with two 3Ware SATA Raid controller? (yes i know SATA disks are not the best choice, but it wasn't mine) should I use iSCSI LUNs or is NFS the way to go? Backup will not be done onsite - we replicate all VMs and Data disks to a remote site with Vizioncore vReplicator - so no need for SnapShotting or other cool stuff on the disk level

BG Christoph

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AntonVZhbankov
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Why use windows for that?

Unless you are bound to some specific features you can easily set up NFS/iSCSI box with linux. It would take about 10 minutes to configure after linux installation.

For example CentOS with prepackaged nfs server and IETD.

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Texiwill
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Hello,

I find Openfiler 2.3 works just fine. The web interface is quite easy to use. I actually use it to demo products..... Easier to travel around with me. But it is a good stable product and yes there is support for it I believe.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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tlindi
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For Windows Server 2008 check .com/thread/188140

tlindi

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Josh26
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Why use windows for that?

Unless you are bound to some specific features you can easily set up NFS/iSCSI box with linux. It would take about 10 minutes to configure after linux installation.

For example CentOS with prepackaged nfs server and IETD.

Second that.

NFS is built into CentOS, and it's been a part of the install basically since Linux started. NFS under Windows is a recent "compatability" service, that's rarely used and "deemphasised".

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Janwei
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My Unix guy told me the same thing about builtin and I end up with a CentOS v5.2 64bit NFS serving 21TB to esx farm and it is so slow I am looking again at Windows 2008 NFS solution or I have to go back to NetAPP.

The wierd thing is that the same CentOS hardware spec serves samba really good and much faster than my NetApp.

www.cyberciti.biz/tips/centos-rhel-poor-nfs-write-performance.html mentioned about a nfs slowness bug fixed but I found somewhere else saying the newest CentOS still has the same problem.

I just wish esx support CIFS(SMB) for the store.

Cheers,

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Josh26
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My Unix guy told me the same thing about builtin and I end up with a CentOS v5.2 64bit NFS serving 21TB to esx farm and it is so slow I am looking again at Windows 2008 NFS solution or I have to go back to NetAPP.

The wierd thing is that the same CentOS hardware spec serves samba really good and much faster than my NetApp.

www.cyberciti.biz/tips/centos-rhel-poor-nfs-write-performance.html mentioned about a nfs slowness bug fixed but I found somewhere else saying the newest CentOS still has the same problem.

I just wish esx support CIFS(SMB) for the store.

Cheers,

I would almost guarantee you will not see significant speed increases by moving to NFS under Windows.

CIFS is not a reliable protocol, you definitely wouldn't want to put an information store on it.

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Janwei
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I did a nfs performance test using three CentOS clients copying 1 to 5 of 1GB files to one NFS server at the same time over 1 dedicated CISCO switch. The server is Dell 1950, 2 quad, 4 gig NICs, 32GB RAM, and Perc 6/i SAS with 3 different operating systems installed on the same hardware for testing.

On the NFS server side, I tested Windows 2003 32bit with Allegro NFS, Windows 2008 32bit NFS, and Solaris 10 U7 64bit using zfs. As comparison, I also tested my netapp cluster. I skip CentOS for now for the slowness problem it gave me in production.

To my huge surprise, Windows 2003 with Allegro is as fast as Solaris of 24576KB per second, the next is Windows 2008 of 24013KB per second, the slowest is Netapp of 20426KB per second.

I also did a rough test against my new 13TB Areca SAS RAID system connected to Windows 2003 Allegro NFS server on Dell 1950 hardware, the result is 45590KB per second. I had to check my calculation script several times before I can believe the result.

In so many cases, Microsoft never done things right in the beginning. But that ugly giant just never gives up with all the resource it has. Now, I believe, NFS is no longer Unix restricted play ground. I will ask my Unix girl to test from all 5 Unix platforms we have against Windows NFS server for compatibility check. After that, I will be happily saving money using Windows NFS instead of Netapp for my esx3.5 server farm till the end of this job.

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RParker
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Yeah and as a person that JUST went through this last week with Windows 2008, I can tell you with no doubt Windows NFS is absolutely HORRIBLE. Worst implementation of a server / client I have ever seen. It is convoluted, a pain to set up, and you have to do many things to get it to work correctly.

Using ANY flavor of Unix / Linux to Windows is much better than slammin' your head against the wall. I think I would rather use putty to u/l the files to a local drive than to mess with Windows NFS ever again.

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