firstly ESX can not address a LUN or storage partition greater than 2TB, so you will need to re-work your image library.
if you are intent on having direct access to a Windows server from your host you will need to get deep and personal at the console.
firstly you will need to open access for SMB access This sounds a very convoluted way of doing things! Are you saying that your ESX3 box cannot mount and SMB NTFS share?
To get it to work do the following:
Make a mount point for the SMB share, if your password contains special characters ($!% etc) put it in single quotes.
mkdir /mnt/sharename
Make sure the ESX firewall has the ports required for SMB open.
esxcfg-firewall -e smbClient
Check that smbClient is in the list of enabled services.
esxcfg-firewall -q
Create your share on your Windows box, make sure the Everyone use has read and modify share permissions. Create a backup user and give it read/write NTFS permissions on the directory
Then mount the SMB share onto your mount point.
mount -t smbfs -o username=$smbuser,password=$smbpass //$smbserver/$remotedir /mnt/sharename
note username should be a user on the domain or local machine that has the desired permissions to the share and file system
And that should be it.
You may also need to set the following if you have problems with the mount, as ESX3 does not support CIFS.
Disable Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always)
Disable Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (if client agrees)
if you want to make this permanent then you will need to edit the init files to load the mount point at startup
Tom Howarth
VMware Communities User Moderator
Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
