recommendation on shared storage for a vSphere 4.1 based lab setup

[WillL]

Hi,

I setup a lab using Openfiler 2.3 as iSCSI target, but soon discovered "compatibility" issue with ESXi 4.1 (it disconnects sometimes)

Can someone please recommend something more stable? Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 could be one option, some Dell NAS is based on it. Starwind doens't seem to have free edition any more, how about FreeNAS? I'm new to these.

I also plan to learn storage along with vSphere using the same lab.

Thank you.

William

[DSTAVERT]

I'm not sure you can buy Windows storage server. I think it is OEM only. Make sure you don't have NIC or other Network issues. Unless the NICs are quality server NICs they can fail under load.

Other options Freenas, Open-e, Falconstor . . .

Forum Upgrade Notice - We will be upgrading VMware Communities systems between 10-12 December 2010. During this time, the system will be placed in READ-ONLY mode.

[logiboy123]

FreeNAS is pretty cool. See the following for instructions on setting it up with ESX;

or

Regards,

Paul Kelly

[alvinswim]

if you have MSDN you can get MS iSCSI target 3.3 and just install it on Win2008R2 that should work out fine.

We've been using hand built iSCSI enterprise target for our office dev environment for 2-3 years but since we upgraded to 4.1 from 3.5 u3 we have all sorts of scsi reservation issues.

currently I'm getting all vm's off our san and am gonna try the MS option since its OEM version is Vmware certified. and it has the much needed scsi-3 reservation compatability which I've heard is what the new iscsi stack in 4.1 needs..

I did a test of MS iscsi target 3.3 and it seems like it is gonna be faster than our IET setup.

On the other hand if you just want simple and free, Openfiler works really well. but you're gonna have to be a little versed in Linux if you aren't already

[habibalby]

hello,

as suggested, Falconstor, Open-e best i have ever used as iSCSI SAN.

[thakala]

Check out http://nexentastor.org/, it is what I run in my ESX home lab.

I wrote a article how to use NFS feature on NexentaStor with vSphere

http://v-reality.info/2010/06/using-nexentastor-zfs-storage-appliance-with-vsphere/