ESXI shared LUN between Linux VM

[louvois]

Hello,

I am having four ESXi4.1 servers in a HA/DRS cluster and connected all to VC5. These ESXi servers are connected to a SAN IBM3600 (Fiber channel Protocol).
I have many VMs under Linux RHEL and Windows 2K working fine !
I have created a LUN of 200GB on my SAN, and it is also visible on my VC5 : OK

But, now I want this LUN accessible and shared  between three VM Linux RHEL on read+write access ? Is it possible ?

I don't want to use NFS or SAMBA shared stuffs, because they use the network, I want if possible to take advantage of this LUN via the Fiber Channel

ps: sorry for my english, from Paris

Thanks,
Prebagarane

[Adekunle]

Thanks for your e-mail, I'll be out of the office (with limited or no access to my mails) between Tuesday 11th, 2011 and Friday 14th, 2011. Please, all correspondence should be directed to Maxwell.ene@dimensiondata.com and chidi.okafor@dimension.com<mailto:servicedesk@ng.didata.com> and Olumuyiwa.ojo@dimensiondata.com for urgent matters.

[AnthonyChow]

I think it should be possible to have 3 VMs accessing the same LUN.

What I have been trying to find out is that is it best practice to have LUN used by only one VM?

[louvois]

In my case, i wan to avoid IPbased solutions like NFS or CIFS, they are very slow comparing to FCP.

So, actually my LUN of 200BG is going to contain above  30 to 40 db2 backup images where the size of each image is 4 or 7 GB.

And the problem is when I restore these db2 backup to my Linux VM, it takes above 20 to 30 minutes because of the network bandwith.

So that's why I want absolutely have this LUN accessible to thes three Linux VM thru Fibre Channel Storage.

IF I succeed my VMs to see the LUN, and  then I kow how to configure  with a cluster filesystem  like OCFS2

Thanks,

[AnthonyChow]

Ah found it.  In the EXSi Configuration Guide:

• Alwasys have only one VMFS datastore for each LUN
• As a cluster file system, VMFS lets multiple ESXi Host access the same VMFS datastore concurrently.  You can connect up to 32 hosts to a single VMFS volume.

I answered my own question.

[louvois]

Hello,

OK I have found the right answer and it is working now.

On each VM, i should attach the shared disk as "persistant mode" :

P.S. : Why it is too difficult to insert an image in this forum !