Shared ISO Datastore? (or shared folder within datastore)

[winstontj]

I just added a second machine running ESXi 5.0. I have a datastore on an existing maching with a datastore that I'd like to access from the new machine #2.

Essentially machine #1 has a datastore with a folder called "ISO" and I'd like to access that from machine #2. I'm running FreeNAS so I'm comfortable with a shared NAS but this would be something different - I want to be able to have machine #2 use/mount ISOs from machine #1's ISO datastore so that I can build VMs on machine #2.

Hope that makes sense - have been spending a lot of time on Google searching for this and it's just not easy to find.

Thx for answers.

[VirtuallyMikeB]

Good day,

Is the ISO datastore on local storage of host number 1? If so, you cannot share this local storage with a second host without some sort of virtual storage appliance like VMware's vSphere Storage Appliance.  Even in this case, you'd have to blow away your local storage and start anew, forcing you to download/backup your ISOs only to upload them once more.

Cheers,

Mike

http://VirtuallyMikeBrown.com

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[weinstein5]

The best way would be to move the ISO folder to your FreeNAS server to share the ISOs between the two hosts - 

[winstontj]

But by moving to FreeNAS each VM could access via mapped network drive (or other NAS share) but not as an ISO on a datastore. Would I have to mount each one individually when I want to build a new VM?

[weinstein5]

You would configure you ESXi hosts to connect to the FreeNAS box - that way the ISO would be available to mount to the virtual cd-roms.

[winstontj]

I'm not sure that is possible - or I'm not doing it properly. When I click edit settings and add a CD/DVD Drive I am given a choice of "use physical drive" or "use ISO image". If I use ISO image and browse I'm only allowed to browse datastores within the host that the VM resides on.

I have a large RAID5 array on a host (host #1) with an ISO datastore. I can easily add that datastore into my FreeNAS VM - but the end-goal is to use these ISO's from another host (host #2) to build new VMs from on host #2.

I'm looking into the VMware vCenter Storage Appliance but that's a bit overkill at this point.

I'm trying to avoid having to copy an ISO from Host#1 to Host#2 when building new VMs on Host#2.

[JimKnopf99]

It´s a little bit confusing. So let me describe what i understand from your virtual infratructure.

2 Host with local storage

1 vcenter server

1 NAS

The ISO´s are stored at HOST1. On that Host, you can easily access to the ISO´s when creating a new machine.

You want to use that ISO folder to use it on HOST2.

What about your NAS? For what are you using that? Only for shared Storage from inside your VM´s?

Or did you configured a SCSI, iSCSI or NFS LUN you can access from HOST1?

To get access from both of your hosts, you have to configure a LUN on your NAS to share it with both of your ESX Hosts.

Otherwise you do not have a change to share your ISO´s to get access from both HOST´S´s.

Frank

[winstontj]

Frank wrote:

It´s a little bit confusing. So let me describe what i understand from your virtual infratructure.

2 Host with local storage

1 vcenter server

1 NAS

The ISO´s are stored at HOST1. On that Host, you can easily access to the ISO´s when creating a new machine.

You want to use that ISO folder to use it on HOST2.

What about your NAS? For what are you using that? Only for shared Storage from inside your VM´s?

Or did you configured a SCSI, iSCSI or NFS LUN you can access from HOST1?

To get access from both of your hosts, you have to configure a LUN on your NAS to share it with both of your ESX Hosts.

Otherwise you do not have a change to share your ISO´s to get access from both HOST´S´s.

Frank

This started out as a DEVELOPMENT ONLY single ESXi 5.0 host with vSphere Client only. I have production machines in a datacenter but they are not clustered or HA - just single hosts (usually a single host per client for simplicity), managed each with vSphere Client. I know I need to sort out vServer but I've tried a few times and haven't found the time (yet) to really master it and install properly.

I have:

3 hosts, each with local storage

0 vcenter servers

1 NAS (a cheap D-Link 2TB NAS which I keep getting error messages on when I try to connect with vSphere)

1 FreeNAS running on Host #1 (right now it's just 1TB of empty space)

1 ISO datastore on Host #1 with ISO's + snaps

What went from me using Host #1 as simply a personal development machine (to test out Windows 8 and new versions of BSD & Linux OS) has turned into an overflow for clients to use for development vs. using testing on their production machines. I'd like to add two more hosts (host #2 and host #3) to the development scheme. Right now Host #1 has the ISO repository/datastore as well as the empty FreeNAS (and a few VMs). Hosts #2 & #3 have ESXi 5.0 installed but nothing else. Consider #2 & #3 a blank slate - and I'm trying to sort out how to build a Server 2k3 R2 VM on Hosts 2 & 3 using an ISO on Host #1.

Each Host has a RAID5 (#1) or RAID6 (#2 & #3) array with 6x 640gb HDD and a single Intel X25 32GB SLC SSD for host cache. While vServer would be nice, I have two seperate clients that are going to do dev work on Host #2 & Host #3 so I'm happy to take back Host #1 for me and manage all three separate via vSphere Client (for the time being). If I need to do vServer so that I can do a vSphere Storage Appliance I'm happy to do that but it's going to take a pretty good tutorial for me to learn and implement this within the next few hours.

All I'm trying to do is link the three from an admin point of view so that I can burn new VMs on Hosts 2 & 3 from the ISO repository on Host #1.

Hope that clears it up.

Thx for the replies!

[JimKnopf99 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

yes, that clears my question.

And my answer is no, you cant.

It is not possible to share local storage to other esx hosts.

You have to build a shared storage from your NAS. It´s possible to use a VM´s as a NAS to share your storage, but you need shared storage for your needs.

It is possible to build a iSCSI shared storage from your free nas (i think). you have to configure your esx host software iscsi storage adapter to connect to that shared storage.

See:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1467270

http://www.sysprobs.com/connect-freenas-iscsi-disks-vmware-vsphere-4-esxi4

Frank