I have a 2 host setup going and I would like to share the local datastores on one to the other. Is this possible with only a 2 host configuration? The reason for doing this is that I would like the second host to run a diskless setup and still be able to utilize the storage I have available on the other. This would be done via a 10g link between the two. I have seen a few older posts about this and many provide vSAN as the solution but i am still confused whether or not this can be accomplished given the hardware I currently have.
Thanks!
No, this isn't a possibility with ESXi, nor is vSAN likely an option for you unless you meet the hardware requirements. This is also not a very good idea as obviously failure of that disk means failure of everything. It's far better to externalize this storage using even a cheap NAS. There are many options on the market that would put you in a far better position and allows it to be easily shared between both hosts.
No, this isn't a possibility with ESXi, nor is vSAN likely an option for you unless you meet the hardware requirements. This is also not a very good idea as obviously failure of that disk means failure of everything. It's far better to externalize this storage using even a cheap NAS. There are many options on the market that would put you in a far better position and allows it to be easily shared between both hosts.
Thank you for the reply. I do have a NAS however I will only be able to get 1gig speeds via iSCSI with the current setup. I'm assuming this will not be ideal given that this doesn't provide much overhead.
It depends which you value more: lower performance or higher availability. Do you care if these workloads get blown up? If yes, availability sounds like the better option.
