NFS Storage , ESXi 6.7

[M4T]

hi community,

Am I able to do this.

I have a spear server and wanted to have 8 SSD drives in a RAID 5 , and have a quad network card installed. can I attach the dell blade servers in a FX2s chassis directly to the other server for storage for eg like a iSCSI. would that work over the ethernet so I can directly connect them together without a switch or a router, and use the RAID 5 storage on the other server to install VMs onto.

Matt

[RyanHardy]

AFAIK there is no way to share a ESXi datastore directly via NFS, however you could set up one VM (I'd choose Linux for NFS) that's consuming the whole datastore and set up NFS shares within this VM. With proper configuration you wouldn't need a switch for that, but I'd advise to check your expectations on the quad NIC - in quite some scenarios you won't be able to distribute traffic among all channels, leaving you with a bottleneck. 10 Gbit networking would be my first choice if I had to do this.

[M4T]

hi ryan,

so it could be possible to have a dedicated server and directly attach it via ethernet to a blade chassis ? for vm storage?

would it have to be NFS or could it be something else? for eg u can have a server and attach a storage server to that server to create a huge storage server for eg.

Matt

[RyanHardy · Accepted solution]

Hello Matt,

didn't you just repeat your original question?

I have no experience with blades, however as long as your hypervisor on this blade server is able to reach your file server (the Linux server I suggested), you are fine with this setup. Just don't expect too much from multiple 1 Gbit links as they are likely to be your bottleneck on SSD storage arrays.

If you are not experienced with Linux you could even use FreeNAS etc. for your file server. NFS is a must though, and I'd recommend to use at least NFS 4 because of this: VMware Knowledge Base

Btw it wouldn't have to be VMware + VM - you could even go old school and install the file server directly onto the server. Has its pros and cons.

You'd be emulating what the whole bunch of NAS systems do today, eg I am using mid-range QNAPs for my test lab storage.

[galbitz_cv]

Matt,

You can create a linux machine that functions like a san for vmware storage. Google SCST for linux and it will give you some information on creating a target accessible by all hosts.

I have done this with ISCSI and ISER specifically, not sure about nfs but i recall there being a nfs target driver. It will take some configuration though, def not turn key if you do not have any linux experience. May be a good project to learn linux with though. There are a few people that make what you are asking for I believe starwind and nexenta have products they would sell you if you struggle to make it yourself with linux.