Sharing a disk between Virtual Machines

[kgill]

Hello,

I'm pretty new to VMware so forgive me if this is a silly question. I'm trying to create a shared drive for 2 different Virtual Machines on the same datastore. Each server has thier own C: drive that has thier install in it, that works fine, but i would like them to have a shared E: drive that they can both access. I tried adding a second virtual hard dirve to each machine and pointing it at the same file but the frist machine locks the file so the other won't power up.

Is there another way to do this?

Thanks

[naveenvm · Accepted solution]

Yes it won't be possible this way. You'll have to use a RDM which could be added as hard disk in both these VMs. For sharing purpose their are two options available i.e.

Virtual - for nodes present at same ESX.

Physical - for nodes present across two different ESX servers.

NUTZ

VCP 3.5

(Preparing for VCP 4)

[amvmware]

Never tried it and i don't think it would work i could see all sorts of issues with permissions to data and both computers trying to access the data at the same time. If they are MS VM's why not create a data shared area on one of the VM's and map a drive to it from the other VM.

Don't forget to leave points for helpful/correct posts.

[Datto]

If this is a non-production setup, you could install OpenFiler into a Virtual Machine (or use the virtual appliance that OpenFiler provides) that is hosted on one ESX host and point each ESX host to use that OpenFiler datastore for VMs. That way, if you had VCenter in place you could VMotion VMs from one physical ESX host to another as well as try out VMware HA (High Availability), VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler -- the load balancer) and if you have compatible hardware, VMware DPM (Distributed Power Managment) if you have more than two ESX hosts and VMware FT (Fault Tolerance) if you have more than two ESX hosts since your shared datastore would be on one of the ESX hosts. Another option would be to install OpenFiler on a third box and just put your VMs on that box.

OpenFiler is freely downloadable and available here:

OpenFiler directions for use with ESX 4.0 are available at

Datto

Message was edited by: Datto -- added DPM and FT note about three ESX hosts

[mcowger]

Even with an RDM, you'll need a cluster capable filesystem (NTFS isn't one). SanMelody or similar makes one.

--Matt

VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek

[jasoncllsystems]

If you are using Windows, you can map network drive permanently.

Regards,

Jas aka Superman

MALAYSIA VMware Communities

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[kgill]

Thanks guys, I wound up going a different way with the storage but I think I will start playing around with RDMs anyway, just to see how they work.

Thanks again!