Does Windows Storage Server supported as NAS (for VMware ESX 3.5)

[jaikrit]

Have anyone tried using Windows Storage Server as NAS (for VMware ESX 3.5)?

Is this compatible?

Thanks

Jaikrit Negi

(VCP, BCFP, SCSA)

[Jasemccarty]

Should work for NFS and iSCSI.

Haven't tried it.

Heard performance is slow.




Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

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[jaikrit]

Hi Jase, Thanks for your response. You are correct to say that it works but does it work without issues. My customer is using this and having some timeout issues. There are also packet dropping at LAN port where NAS is connected. Seems WSS is not a compatible as NAS may be as iSCSI.

Thanks

Jaikrit

(VCP, BCFP, SCSA)

[Dave_Mishchenko]

A couple of threads that might be helpful.

Poor performance with NFS on Windows - http://communities.vmware.com/message/944761

http://communities.vmware.com/message/997508

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Windows Storage Server will work if you also install or setup Services For Unix to get NFS Support (http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_Windows_Services_For_UNIX_%28SFU%29_NFS) or install an iSCSI target solution. It will not work out of the box. Performance for both of these will be slow.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

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

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Top Virtualization Security Links: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Top_Virtualization_Security_Links

[asatoran]

I can confirm WSS works as NFS storage for ESX 3.5...and is slow. However, our VMs are small and for testing, not production, so slow copy times were not a critical factor for us. We use it because it was there and I needed some storage space. Despite it being slow, I do find it stable.

[Schorschi]

Would never consider Unix for Windows (NFS) as NAS solution for production. Microsoft does not support Unix for Windows in the context fo VMware environment. It does work, I have done it for a couple of years off and on in the lab, since NFS datastores were officially supported by VMware, to compare as baseline for iSCSI evaluation of AX line. But for true production, not a chance. This not to say I have issues with NFS, I don't, but it is a yugo compared to Ferrai, when compared to Fibre Channel based systems, and until recently VMware would not recommend NFS of any type as a best practices model, that, and 10GB became mainstream. A dedicated appliance for NFS is one thing, such as NetApp based NFS, but not Windows. Windows was never designed to be a storage controller.

[jaikrit]

Thanks to all of you for responding. It;s correct that WSS works as NAS for ESX3.5 but it's slow.

Currently we are evaluating other options like iSCSI to resolve the issues with slow performance.

Jaikrit Negi

(VCP,BCFP,SCSA)

[DavidHazar]

Here is an article I wrote that explains some issues that I had with windows storage server and the hotfixes I found to fix the problem:

http://davidhazar.blogspot.com/2009/10/solved-windows-storage-server-nas-nfs.html