Datastore mirroring

[martino62]

In my lab i'm using two hosts with ESXi 5.5 working in a HA cluster, VCenter Virtual Appliance 5.5 and an external datastore with iSCSI (an Ubuntu server used as a LUN target).

Now i need to add a second server used again as datastore that mirrors the one already working. A sort of "HA" of datastores.

I need some help: it is possible ? If yes, what KB article or document in VMware is available on this subject ?

Best Regards,

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Hi Friend,

Just thought to share my understanding.

If you configure RAID 1 with your LUNs, it is going to give that mirrored volume.

Ref:LazyWinAdmin: FreeNas 8.3 - Creating a RAID volume and Configure iSCSI

Configuring Highly Available iSCSI Storage for VMware ESX Server 4.0 | Virtualization content from W...

It may help you.

Message was edited by: vVision

[King_Robert]

A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores with shared resources and a shared management interface. Datastore clusters are to datastores what clusters are to hosts. When you create a datastore cluster, you can use vSphere Storage DRS to manage storage resources.

When you add a datastore to a datastore cluster, the datastore's resources become part of the datastore cluster's resources. As with clusters of hosts, you use datastore clusters to aggregate storage resources, which enables you to support resource allocation policies at the datastore cluster level. The following resource management capabilities are also available per datastore cluster.

[martino62]

Via web interface, i follow the suggestion and begin to create a "datastore cluster" but the answer is:

The VMware vSphere 5 Standard license for Host deneb320 does not include vSphere Storage DRS. Upgrade the license.

Now, i have two Standard VSphere license (for my two hosts) and a VCenter License.

My understandin is that the DRS License requires a minimum of 3 hosts: it is correct ?

Is the VSphere DRS License the same as the VSphere Storage DRS License ?

Thank You

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Hi Friend,

If you want to use DRS & SDRS, you need enterprise plus vCenter license. Also it is not correct that you need minimum 3 host. DRS just works fine even if you have 2 host in a cluster.

One thing I would like to highlight here is that, even if you use SDRS, there will not be "datastore HA ". SDRS cluster just help to have better initial placement of VMs & load balancing based on space & IO. If one datastore goes down/disconnected, SDRS itself can not move VMs from that datastore to other. Hence you will not get access to these VMs.

If you want to make replica of all your VMs, you have some options as follows:

1. vSphere replication. (Its works even on VM basis)

2. Virtual SAN (You need valid vSAN license + min 3 host with ESXi 5.5 U1 latest patch)

3. SRM (across sites)

4. Any third party solution for replication.

[martino62]

Yes, i want to make a replica (if balancing is included is better, but this is not mandatory for me) so that a fault in a datastore is not blocking for the service,

in the same way as hosts HA, from the "continuity of service"  point of view.

Given my small environment (two hosts with HA and two datastores) what do you suggest from the four choices you proposed ?

1. vSphere replication. (Its works even on VM basis)

2. Virtual SAN (You need valid vSAN license + min 3 host with ESXi 5.5 U1 latest patch)

3. SRM (across sites)

4. Any third party solution for replication.

Thank You,

Regards,