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NFeeling
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi Disk

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to vmware ESXi, I'm ttrying to create a 2 node cluster for SQL 2005 i n the same physical ESXi server. How can I share one or more disks between the 2 VMs?

In the SCSI controller (SCSI bus sharing) option I saw the option virtual "Virtual disks can be shared between virtual machines on the same server", I selected that option for both servers and map both VMs to the same disk, but this doesn't work!!! Smiley Happy does anyone knows what do I need to do to make this possible?

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3sh
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tell us more about your setup (drives, etc)

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
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Hi NFeeling,

Welcome to the forums.

>disk, but this doesn't work!!!

What error message do you see?

Also, what disks (and how many) are you trying to share between the two instances of sql 2005?

--sanjana

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NFeeling
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Because I don't know how to create a Virtual disk without using a VM, I did the following:

The steps:

- I created a VM without disks.

- After VM creation I went to the VM properties and add 4 new disks.

- I deleted the VM from inventory.

- I went to VM folder and moved the disks (.vmdk) to a folder that I created named SQLStorage.

- I deleted the VM folder. Now I have the disks in the SQLStorage folder.

- Then I went to the SQL nodes VMs (SQLNode01 and 02, already have OS installed and already are members of a domain), and changed the properties of the SCSI Bus Sharing to "Virtual". I did that on both nodes.

- Started both nodes to check if they can startup correctly, and they did. Then shutdown both nodes.

- After shutdown, I added the same disks that were in SQLStorage folder to each SQL Node.

After I start the first node I get the folowing error:

"VMWare ESX Server cannot open the virtual disk, "/vmfs/volumes...../disk.vmdk" for custering. Please verify that the disk was created using the thick option. Cannot open the disk /vmfs/volumes/..../disk.vmdk or one of the snapshot disk depends on. Reason: Thin/TBZ disks cannot be opened in multiwriter mode.."

So, I think that I need to create a disk using the "thick" option, where do I find this option, or am I missing something more?

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Sanjana
Hot Shot
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Because I don't know how to create a Virtual disk without using a VM, I did the following:

That is a highly convoluted method. There is a much simpler way Smiley Happy

You can right-click the VM, navigate to Edit Settings. Under the "Hardware" tab, if you hit "Add", you can add a hard disk from there.

Hope that helped,

--sanjana

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NFeeling
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Hi Sanjana,

Yes, we can add the disk using a VM, but as I said before I have a Folder were I store the virtual disks to be shared between noth nodes. The problem is that you CANT choose a specific folder to store the newly created disks, when creating new Disks you've 2 options: 1- To store the new disk with the VM, 2- to store the new disk in a given store, hopefully VMWare will allow us in the future to choose more than just a store to save the new disk.

Regarding to my problem, the last action that I did was to use the vmkfstools to create a disk with the "thick" option, I already can start both nodes and they can see the disks, but when I try to create the cluster I don't have disks available to use??!!!, so I try to use the vmkfstools -w to zeroed the disks, but the problem remains, when I create a new cluster in windows the wizard can't find a disk to use with the quorum.

Does anyone knows how to create a disk that can be used between nodes in a cluster in windows using ESXi??:|

Thank you all for your help Smiley Happy

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NFeeling
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Ok, I think I found the solution, the problem was that I needed a new SCSI device for the shared disks.:D

Everything is working now... I will do more tests to check if get additional problems.B-)

Than you all.;)

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NFeeling
Contributor
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Okay, more news on this one...

Cluster works fine with 2003 servers, but with 2008 I had no luck. Found out that ESXi is not SCSI-3 complaint. :_|

Is this true?

Any alternative solution to this one?

Assuming that is true, when VMWare will have SCSI-3 that alows this?

Thank you for your answers.:)

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