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properdiamondge
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Best Storage VM, or not for RAID50 6x2TB

Hi all,

This is my first post to the VMware communities, so go easy on me.

My aim is to build a Storage Server to make available 8TB from 6x2TB Hard Drive in RAID50. I would prefer this storage to be provided by a Virtual Machine, hosted by a powerful ESX server so I can cut down the amount of physical servers, and run other VM's from it.

It doesn't sound unreasonable, after all I have a Asus KFSN5-D/IST motherboard with a single six core CPU (it will take 2), an Adaptec 3805 RAID controller capable of hooking up 8 Sata/SAS drives, 4U Antec rackmount case with all the room I need for the hard drives, vSphere Essentials and a Technet subscription.

My plan ideally would be to create a new VM running Microsoft Storage Server 2008 on the ESX 4 host, which would provide access to the RAID array.

So to my worries, erm I mean questions:

1) Am I correct in thinking I can't provide this single 8TB lump to a VM due to vmfs 2tb limitations?

2) Is there a way I can avoid using the limits of vfms and provide direct access to the RAID array for the MSS 2008 VM?

3) Am I mad to run this storage a VM? How do major companies provide mass storage, the must be using vmware, but I can't see them juggling around with 2tb limits.

I will designate a dedicated Storage Server if I have to but someone must have some good advice here...

Thanks in advance.

Ian

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AndreTheGiant
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ESX/ESXi cannot see disks grater than 2 TB - 512B.

So use your RAID controller to create more Volumes, then create more vmdk and use Windows Dynamic Disk to merge togher.

Or better, use DFS to merge togher more shares in a single namespace.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro

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AndreTheGiant
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ESX/ESXi cannot see disks grater than 2 TB - 512B.

So use your RAID controller to create more Volumes, then create more vmdk and use Windows Dynamic Disk to merge togher.

Or better, use DFS to merge togher more shares in a single namespace.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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chadwickking
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Good question but yes you will be limited to a 2TB limit when presenting storage to VM's unless you enable NPIV for SAN but haven't gone there myself.

Give it a read:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/181028?start=15&tstart=0

NPIV - (which just uses extents on the storage side of things but doable...)

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1545238

Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

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Cheers, Chad King VCP4 Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking | virtualnoob.wordpress.com If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
properdiamondge
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Thanks for all your hep.

I will be putting all together and running some tests over the next few weeks. I will try some of those suggestions and see what works out best.

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