sharing virtual disks between vms

[powers]

Hi everyone,

I would like to know if it is possible for 2 Windows 2003 server VMs to share a virtual disk and have them both doing read/writes to the data.

If not, can anyone suggest another way to do this? Is is possible to have 2 separate virtual disks that can replicate the data between each other without using Windows (tcp/ip stack)?

I know it seems a big ask....

Thanks

El

[weinstein5]

The only way for two windows machines, physical or virtual, is to share a disk drive is through the use of MS Clustering or you can share out the disk through windows but it sound like this not what you want to do - question I have is what are you attempting to do? There is osftware out there that will allow you to replicate disk - within windows you have Volume Shadow Copy Service or DOuble Take -

[mcowger]

MS cluster is not the only way. There are plenty of other clustered filesystems out there including CXFS, Melio, Polyserve, etc.. However, you DO NEED a clustered FS.

--Matt

[powers]

ok, I've clarified the request..turns out the disks will have different data on them.

The scenario is 1 VM (VM!1) that has its own virtual disk (VD1). Then another VM (VM2) that has its own virtual disk (VD2).

The question is how to get VM2 to read and write to VD1 (and vice versa) without having to make it a network share and use the TCP/IP stack.

[mcowger]

Best way is to have VM1 have its own OS disk (VD1), VM2 have its own OS disk (VD2) and ahve them share a third (VD3). But as I mentioned above, you will need to find a clustered filesystem solution.

--Matt

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

To do what you desire you will need a clustered filesystem and the VMs need to be setup according to the MSCS Clustering Guide. The virtual hardware setup is the same for MSCS, Linux clusters, and any shared disk clusters.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization