Announcement: ESX3 on Workstation 6 follow up whitepaper released

[admin]

Hi all,

I've written a follow up white paper to the Xtravirt "ESX3 on Workstation 6" white paper, outlining the steps to install an iSCSI Enterprise Target Server in a VM and configure your ESX3 VMs to use this iSCSI storage for a 'VI3 in a box' configuration.

Great if you want to demo VI3 Enterprise features like VMotion, HA and DRS without having demo server kit available - you can run all of the required compenents on a single physical machine. This will also run on well specced laptop for mobile demonstrations.

Download it here: http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=16

Hope it's useful, comments and suggestions welcome.

Cheers,

Alex

[MR-T]

Nice 1 geezer.

Looking forward to testing.

[hfourie]

This looks a great article. I have followed similar ones with FC 4, and could never get it working. Im downloading FC 7 as I type, and will give this a go. Looks much more detailed though.

Good job.

[peetz]

You can get there much quicker by using the OpenFiler Virtual Appliance which has the iSCSI Enterprise Target already built-in.

Works great for me.

\- Andreas

[oreeh]

OpenFiler uses an old version of IET which doesn't support reserve/release.

This could lead to problems with HA/DRS/vMotion.

[peetz]

Did not have any problems so far (VMotion is working, have not yet tried HA), but you're right. The white paper recommends IET version 0.4.15, and the latest OpenFiler release includes 0.4.14.

Hopefully they are going to update it soon.

[admin]

I prefer using IET to OpenFiler, after all OpenFiler is just rPath Linux (with some CentOS components) and IET pre-packaged - and it lags behind the main IET releases.

IET is such a breeze to set up I can't really see a reason to use OpenFiler but if it works for you then fair enough.

[peetz]

For IET to setup you need to have some Linux (or *BSD) up and running first, and this is the main part of the work.

OpenFiler is available as a virtual appliance and it took me 15 minutes, before i was able to mount my first iSCSI-volume.

[admin]

True but it's only a single install, from then on you can upgrade IET with just a couple of commands - so it's easier to stay up to date with the IET releases, you're not left waiting for OpenFiler to update their IET version - and you can template your Linux base if you like.

I just prefer choosing my own Linux distro, and (for me) the initial installation steps are worth the extra time for flexibility of configuration..

[GavinJ]

Out of interest we've also produced a similar white paper for Openfiler now as well - we were working on both IET and Openfiler docs at the same time but I got distracted doing other stuff....

It's up on the normal place on the website: http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=18

You can certainly download the appliance but for completeness this paper runs through a full install/config.

Cheers

Gavin