Local Disc Sharing

[dpalmer]

We have 2 Dell 2950 systems and a single Dell1950 system.

The 2950 systems have the following configuration:

1. ESX 3.01

2. Raid3 on Primary ESX 3.01 400 GB SAS discs (three)

3. Raid0 on Secondary Storage 480 GB SAS discs (3) as a single VMFS Vitual Volume

The Dell 1950 system has the following configuration:

1. ESX 3.01

2. Raid3 on Primary ESX 3.01 400 GB SAS discs (three)

We wish to make the Raid0 storage on the 2950's available to each of the ESX hosts as shared storage. This would provide a small "SAN" (880GB)available to all three ESX 3.01 servers. What would be the most efficient way to obtain this objective? Perfomence counts.

Note; we have all three host machines registered in VC 2.01. We have DRS, HA addons for each of the licenses.

The ultimate goal is to have these machines exist in a LABManager enviorment that is flexible and performance optimized for product System Testing. HA and back up is less important than performance.

Thanks,

Dennis

Message was edited by:

dpalmer

[KevinG]

You will have better luck getting a answer in the ESX forum

Moving posting

[dpalmer]

Thanks,

Although new to theses forums, we are fairly knowlegable concerning VMWare.

Again, I appreciate your help on the use of VMTN

Dennis

[Rumple]

You will not be able to share out the local disk as ESX does not provide any type of sharing/iscsi type processes. That vmfs is only available to the host machine.

[dpalmer]

You are correct. ESX does not provide for disc sharing directly. Although, today we were able to accomplish the desire effect of making the data stors created on each of the ESX servers available to all other ESX machines by configuring the ESX Hosts and VMs into resource pools and clusters in VC 2.0.1.

This effectively makes a "shared storage" array for VMFS activities of cloning, and moving VMs a bit easier. This is not the same as iSCSI, or fiber channel to a SAN as large block moves are not available but it is a reasonable work around in Gigabit environment.

The real answer is byte (no pun intended) the bullet and invest in a SAN.

Thanks for the reply,

Dennis

[Paul_Lalonde]

While the level of performance may be questionable for a larger deployment, if you search the forums for the thread on configuring an ESX Server for NFSv3 services, you might be able to set up localized, shared storage this way.

If you can't find the information on it, drop me a line off-line and I can assist you with it.

Regards,

Paul

[grasshopper]

Here's another option for test/dev:

http://vmguru.com/blogs/vmguru/archive/2006/10/12/925.aspx