Presenting storage from a Windows NAS server to ESX4i

[Oli_L]

We are purchasing a storage server running Windows 2008 and we should have about 9TB of usable space.

I have just been asked to provide a developement environment which needs 4 VMs and which requires about 4TB of storage. I was wandering whether I can serve up 4TB of storage from the Windows 2008 storage server and present this to ESX4i (the free version) which in turn can run 4 VM guests each using a 1 TB vmdk file

Does anyone have any ideas how to present an NTFS share to an ESX4i server?

TIA

Oli

[jordan57]

You will need to either present your storage via iSCSI or NFS to the VMware host. Not sure if your setup can do iSCSI so you might have to present it as NFS.

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[weinstein5]

You will have to employ Windows Unix Services - this will allow you to present a Windows Share as a NAS/NFS device - which can be accessed by ESX/ESXi

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[Oli_L]

Great - thank you for your answers. I think I have all the info I need. I may be able to use Windows Storage Server 2008 Embedded Tools to then serve up iSCSI targets, BUT we haven't got the server yet so I am unsure if I get the tools with 2008WSSR2. If not then I will lkook into NFS but I wanted to steer clearof this.

Thanks again

Cheers

Oli

[Anton_Kolomyeyt]

StarWind Free should be OK for you needs. No need to pay anything, installs and runs under any Windows OS and does not require limited OEM hardware and server license as WSS does. And it's WAY faster compared to MS stuff

Good luck!

Anton

[Anton_Kolomyeyt]

NFS implemented with Windows is a performance pig

Anton