Windows 2003 storage server

[RobMokkink]

for a customer where are looking at how they can benefit from vmware to consolidate their servers and provide flexibility and high availability.

The problem is that they don't need a san of huge nas.

I was thinking about windows 2003 storage server, it provides iscsi etc.

Anyone any experience with this product in combination with vmware esx?

[dingding]

DataCore SANmelody may be a option. one of my customer use it. SANmelody support both iscsi and FC, depends on your needs.

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/resources/communitysupport/?elq=F536DFBF2C694AC2BCD3E0DAEB0F1A62

[RobMokkink]

Hi DingDIng,

Ik know sanmelody could be an option.

But i also need nfs and cifs/smb support.

Windows 2003 storage server comes with wintarget as iscsi provider.

One downside is that it is not on the official HCL list.

[dingding]

yes, it's not officially supported, also is not listed in Community-Supported list.

win2k3 storage server nfs support for ESX works fine in my lab. i use this nfs as my VM backup store.

since my win2k3 storage server is a old version, it can't be a iscsi provider.

although not too much, there are some official not support but technical feasible solution exists.

Message was edited by:

dingding

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I have the wintarget provider installed in my home lab for ESX and overall it works fine. It's very easy to setup and manage - vmotion, RDM, etc all work OK.

Downside, once in a while the service will fail, but I'm running an old version of this (2.0.something). It is windows, so patch tuesday is a pain and I had installed their VSS provider as I wanted to create snapshots of the LUNs to mount as a seperate LUN, but the snapshots were read only so not what I was looking for.

[RobMokkink]

Guys,

Thanks for the responses.

NFS is also a option.

VSS is also great for end users.

But how about connecting a tape robot etc. to the storage server for backups and history?

[RobMokkink]

I have further studied the windows 2003 storage server docs and you are free to install 3rd party products.

[Paul_Lalonde]

I have seen no issues with WSS R2 using either iSCSI (Wintarget 3.0) or NFS. I find the NFS a little on the slow side, but I haven't had any connectivity issues once it's been set up properly.

Paul