Two ESXi servers, two Datastores, Accessing Both

[Lery154]

Hello community. I have recently setup ESXi 4.0 on my server. Datastore is setup locally. The server has one datastore.

I have a secondary server that I setup with ESXi 4.0. Same deal as the first server. Local datastore.

Is there a way I can share the first server's datastore with the second datastore? Using the second ESXi server, I would like to access the first server's datastore so I can utilize the files on it. I tried using the Add Storage feature in the vClient on the second server. I did choose the network share option, but it did not work. Not really sure what I did wrong, or if I was even in the right area. Is there any documented steps to accomplishing this?

Thanks for any information you can lend me.

I'm also interested in being able to access the datastore from my VM's running Windows OS's, if that is possible? I am new to ESXi, so I have been trying to find most of my answers via Google Decided to try out this community.

-Derek

P.S. No I have not read the entire manual yet. If this is all clearly documented there, just tell me I can gladly go read through it.

[Joseigh]

Someone may want to step in and correct me if I'm off, but I don't think that's possible. The recommended way to accomplish sharing files between the two is to connect them both to some type of shared storage (iSCSI target, NFS/CIFS share, etc). Also, your Windows hosts will not be able to share their local volumes as they will be VMFS... not to mention they would have no way of connecting to it. That's probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

[asatoran]

Normally a local storage can't be shared to other ESX hosts, as mentioned. However, I've recently been informed of StorMagic Virtual Appliance with HA which does just that. I haven't had a chance to fully play with this yet, but it does seem to do what you're asking.

[Lery154]

Thanks I will have a look at this software.

Any ideas about setting up the ESXi host server's datastore for FTP access? I found a few articles via Google search, but nothing really solid.

[Joseigh]

I'm not sure if you mean to be able to use the local volume as an ftp server, or if you just want to be able to grab/put files on the ESX host for whatever, but you can use WinSCP to transfer files to/from your ESX hosts (from your PC). It's free, and you can get it here.

[Lery154]

Yes I wanted to be able to use FTP, whatever FTP client, to access my datastores. Just makes life easier to put/grab files as needed. WinSCP just seems like an FTP client though? How does it actually connect to the datastore?

[Joseigh]

What are you planning, if anything, to store on the local volumes besides the ESX OS and VM's? I needed to upload some drivers to run some update commands via SSH to detect a new NIC I installed, and WinSCP worked great for that. Not sure if that's a simliar scenario to what you're talking about.

[asatoran]

Yes I wanted to be able to use FTP, whatever FTP client, to access my datastores. Just makes life easier to put/grab files as needed. WinSCP just seems like an FTP client though? How does it actually connect to the datastore?

SCP Wiki article

I'm not sure that ESXi has an FTP server. (Maybe the full ESX, but not ESXi.) SCP is the normally recommended method for copying to and from the datastores. In addition to WinSCP, FastSCP is also often recommended and is what I use most of the time. I find that I can copy anything to the datastores with the VI client (e.g.: browse datastore) except for really large files like the VMDKs or ISOs, which is when I use FastSCP. Because the two primary methods I use to connect to the datastores is by software that has to be installed anyway (Vi client and FastSCP,) I'm normally not accessing the datastores except from my workstation. I'll remote to my workstation if I'm not at my desk. YMMV, but once I had setup remote access to my workstation, then access to the datastore from other workstation became a non-issue for me. (I don't want just anybody to directly access the datastores, after all. )