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christianZ
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What storage can ESX "Starter Edition" support ?

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure here. My question is would the "Starter Edition" support luns on fibre channel storage, when the host's fc hba will be connected directly to fc subsystem.

I know that clustered storage is not supported here, but I only want to connect two hosts to different luns.

Is it supported, would it work?

Any hints would be appreciated.

Regards

Christian

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BUGCHK
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I don't remember the exact words of the product description, but my understanding is that you are not 'allowed' to use Fibre Channel interconnect - no matter if you are running fabric or FC_AL protocol. Whether it technically works anyway, I don't know - never seen a 'Starter' license and had time to test it.

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bertdb
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as far as I know, that won't work. But you make a good point, it's not clear from the documentation I've seen.

BUGCHK
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I don't remember the exact words of the product description, but my understanding is that you are not 'allowed' to use Fibre Channel interconnect - no matter if you are running fabric or FC_AL protocol. Whether it technically works anyway, I don't know - never seen a 'Starter' license and had time to test it.

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AnthonyM
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Starter edition only supports local storage, and NFS.;

We have it, all the tools are still there, but they just don't work (as I found out when I tried to use iSCSI, I could set all the connections up, but just got no data flow).

You can still use iSCSI from within virtual machines, so long as you use a software initiator, but I don't think there is any way to fake fibre channel.

bertdb
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I've never seen U320 SCSI - to - Fibre Channel conversion boxes, even though it's a theoretical possibility. For private LUNs, it should work reliably. But as they don't seem to exist, there's no way to "fake" fibre channel.

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christianZ
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I saw these 2 docs:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_pricing.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_key_features_benefits.pdf

and it seems that fc hbas connections are not possible (iscsi also) so I have no chance.

Thanks anyway for all replies.

Regards

Christian

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