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bzan11
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Can I use a NAS as a remote datastore

I currently have 5 cisco ucs esxi hosts at my main location. I am looking to get rid of old servers at each smaller branch location. I was wondering if I could place a NAS at each branch and use the NAS to remotely connect to the main location esxi hosts, and use it as a datastore.

-So main branch has all the esxi hosts

-Remote sites (10 of them, a few miles apart) Place a NAS that will be the datastore for that site.

-The idea is to keep user data at each remote site and does not have to traverse the WAN

If so, any recommendations on a NAS?

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weinstein5
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Welcome to the Community - It is sounds like you are looking to virtualize the servers in your remote offices - if you were to store the VMs in the remote offices you will be magnifying the amount of data going across the WAN connections - I would store the remote office VMs in the same location as the ESXi server that will be hosting the VMs

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TheVMinator
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You probably need to define what you want to do more granularly:

Do you want to replicate data at the array level between the NAS devices at your different sites?

I wasn't completely clear from your question but you don't want to connect an ESXi host to a NAS at a different site.  Routed NAS is not normally a good idea and is not supported by VMware in some connections.

The right NAS depends on your budget, the size you need, the performance you need, the features you require, etc.

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weinstein5
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Welcome to the Community - It is sounds like you are looking to virtualize the servers in your remote offices - if you were to store the VMs in the remote offices you will be magnifying the amount of data going across the WAN connections - I would store the remote office VMs in the same location as the ESXi server that will be hosting the VMs

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bzan11
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No, I dont need to replicate data between sites.

I think you answered my main question. "Routed NAS is not a good idea"

Im just looking for a solution to having to purchase a physical server or host for each site, since I would like to keep user data locally at the sites.  I need about 2 TB of storage at each site but performance wise i just need file/print server.

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weinstein5
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You could virtualize the Remote Office servers and place them in your main site on your Cisco UCS farm - depending on your WAN infrastructure I think you will find performance is acceptable -

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