One Datastore for all ESX machines

[dguilloryjr]

well let me start with my issue... we have serveral esx servers and i have been created a folder on all my ESX servers called ISO's and that is where i have been installing all my cd's that i ISO.

so all my esx servers have this iso folder with a bunch of cd images... so i have a image of windows 2008 on all 3 esx servers

i would like to have all my cd images on 1 server and be able to let all the other esx server access that datastore to get the cd image?

any ideas?

[lowburb]

Shared storage is the what comes to my mind. You could setup FreeNAS or some other free NAS server on the network and share that out to all ESX servers.

I haven't spent much time trying to attach my ESXi 4 to FreeNAS, but I know the first time I tried, I failed. I think I had FreeNAS hardware problems tho. If you want a more enterprise solution, HP and Dell provide their own "Enterprise Grade" NAS solutions

[AndreTheGiant]

You can use a NAS supported by ESX/ESXi (you will need NFSv3 over TCP).

For example, some Iomega products are certified for vSphere.

Andre

[lowburb]

Is the Iomega stuff reliable by the users of ESX? If money is spent, some user feedback is always appreciated

[AndreTheGiant]

For a lab the entry level model is cheap and simple to use.

But, IMHO, for a production enviroment you must have at least a storage with dual power supples, dual controller, multipath, ...

Andre

[Rumple]

Personally I don't use anything directly attached to the ESX environment because i client side attach to ISO or mount the ISO on my workstation and attach to the drive using the VIC.

All my ISO's sit out on a shared drive (doesn't even have to by anthing better then a USB drive attached to a workstation

Open the console, connect cdrom and browse to the share and pick my iso...

All done...