VMFS LUN sharing between Different Virtual Center Datacentres

[alienjoker]

Hi all,

We currently have production and test virtual centre instances both with their own FC attached SANs. (completely separate fabrics etc)

We constantly clone Production VMs and then SCP them over the network to the test environment and register them into the second vCentre instance successfully.

What I'd like to know is if I created an ISL between the Prod and Test FC switches and then presented one of the TEST VMFS luns to the production cluster, whether this would handle the SCSI locks given the disjoint nature between the hosts within the different clusters that have no visibility of one another? This would mean we could clone directly to the TEST VMFS and not need to SCP.

Note: The Test and Production environments are 100% isolated and there is no intention to create a Trust between the two domains to configure linked mode.

Wondered if anyone else has tried this?

Thanks

[a_p_]

I don't see any issues in presenting the test lun to the production systems. I'm sure VMFS locking is able to handle different hosts.

However adding an ISL between your FC switches will be an issue. This would actually extend your fabric, which would probably make it necessary to reconfigure everything.

André

[JoJoGabor]

Not sure if you can do this if you use vCenter linked mode so that each vcenter instance knows about the other one. Then you could simply Clone the VM straight into the other environment and its datastores. The alternative is just to use one vcenter to manage both environments

[alienjoker]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your replies.

I'll give the ISL a test and see how the SCSI locking handles the presentation between the two disjoint DataCentres. Worst case its only a TEST LUN that will get skewy.

JoJo - as per my orignal question: +"Note: The Test and Production environments are 100% isolated and there

is no intention to create a Trust between the two domains to configure

linked mode."+

The reason for using multiple vCenters is so that the Test environment really is just a Test environment. The audience using it want to be able to pull the plug on the vCenter server without affecting access to production systems through the VI Client. Similarly, whilst testing our VDI deployment with mulitple vendors, we don't want random desktops appearing in the wrong Folders and risking deletion of server VMs from misconfigured connection brokers ;o)

Will let you know how I get on.

Cheers