How do you allow a VM (running Windows) to access another hard disk?

[martymonster]

I have a new Intel Server which has 2 x Hard discs. 1 x 500GB and 1 x 1.5TB.

I have installed ESXI 4 (update 1 Free edition) onto the 500GB disc.

I have then installed Windows 2008 Server R2 as a Virtual machine under ESXI.

I plan to add more virtual machines.

All these virtual machines will be under ESXI on the 500GB hard disc.

The 1.5TB disc is currently empty.

This disc is planned for file storage (Music, Videos etc) and backups of the virtual machines.

This disc is also to be accessed by standalone PCs so that they can access the data.

I would like the virtual machines to be able to access this 1.5TB drive as normal windows discs and thus I do NOT want them set up as datastores under ESXI.

Can this be done and if so, how?

Martin

[rshondell]

There are two main methods to have guests access disks outside of their own datastores. The first is to make use of RDMs (raw device mappings) to map a LUN directly to your Windows guest. When you do this, the Windows guest will see this disk directly and it will not be on a VMFS volume. I don't think this applies to your case here, though.

The second would be to use some type of network file sharing with this disk space, like NFS, CIFS or SMB, and treat your Windows VMs just like any other physical network file client. In your setup, one option would be to create a VM to act as a file server and give it a chunk of your 1.5TB disk. It could then serve files to both your VMs and your physical hosts, if your networking/firewall setup will allow this. This option would be best if you are planning on having multiple clients connect to some centralized file share, which is what your description sounds like to me.

[Rumple]

You cannot make this disk look like a drive letter on multiple physical or virtual systems, nor can it share itself out magically without some operating system in front of it. that 1.5TB VMFS volume will need to have a disk created on it and then attached to a VM to be shared out.

If you want space for backups then you were better off buying a little dlink nas or something and putting 2x1.5TB drives in RAID 1...then I would have suggested putting in a good raid card and 3 drives into the server for playing with VM's.

[martymonster]

Thankyou for the replies.

As my plan is to add more Virtual machines and one of those was going to be a fileserver.

I will add that whole 1.5TB disc to the fileserver VM which can then partition the disc itself for specific needs.

Then these partitions can be shared so that any PC or VM can access the data.

Forgot to add, this system and other PCs are all for home use so there is no firewall or networking problems.

Martin