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jontz
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iSCSI LUN/datastore configuration question

Hello all!  I am brand new to VMWare and iSCSI, and I have a question about datastores as it relates to being mounted to an iSCSI target.

Here is my setup.  I have a Dell PowerEdge R810 connected via a dedicated 10Gb link to a Dell PowerEdge 2950 that I am using as a SAN.  The R810 has no hard drives in it, it boots ESXi from a redundant SD card setup built into the server.  My SAN software is Server 2008 Enterprise with the Microsoft iSCSI Target 3.3 software installed.  I've created 1 target, LUN 0, 800GB .vhd file sitting on an NTFS partition, and set up a datastore on it in VCenter.  The datastore is the size of the entire iSCSI target, 800GB.  I have my first virtual server up and going taking 50GB of space from the datastore.

Here is my question: Can I create more virtual machines using the datastore I set up?  I know this sounds like a stupid question, but my concern comes from some reading I have done about multiple machines accessing a single LUN.  If I set up another VM, will it blow up the file system on my SAN since two VMs would be accessing the same large VHD file on the NTFS partion, or am I way off base?

Bonus points question:

I have another R810 that I will be bringing online soon.  Assuming I am OK to add more VMs from my first machine, could I connect this box to the datastore as well and create VMs, or should I set up a seperate datastore on another iSCSI target?

Thanks for your patience with a new guy.  I've searched and read for hours, and I might have read too much so I thought I'd just askt the experts.

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vmroyale
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Hello and welcome to the forums.

Can I create more virtual machines using the datastore I  set up? 

Yes.

If I set up another VM, will it blow up the file system on  my SAN since two VMs would be accessing the same large VHD file on the  NTFS partion, or am I way off base?

No, you should be fine.  One thing to keep in mind is that Windows/MS iSCSI Target is not a supported storage solution.  There could be scalability problems with Windows/MS iSCSI, but you will be fine from a VMware perspective.

I have another R810 that I will be bringing online soon.  Assuming I am  OK to add more VMs from my first machine, could I connect this box to  the datastore as well and create VMs, or should I set up a seperate  datastore on another iSCSI target?

You could, but I would personally set up a different datastore on another iSCSI target.

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com

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vmroyale
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Hello and welcome to the forums.

Can I create more virtual machines using the datastore I  set up? 

Yes.

If I set up another VM, will it blow up the file system on  my SAN since two VMs would be accessing the same large VHD file on the  NTFS partion, or am I way off base?

No, you should be fine.  One thing to keep in mind is that Windows/MS iSCSI Target is not a supported storage solution.  There could be scalability problems with Windows/MS iSCSI, but you will be fine from a VMware perspective.

I have another R810 that I will be bringing online soon.  Assuming I am  OK to add more VMs from my first machine, could I connect this box to  the datastore as well and create VMs, or should I set up a seperate  datastore on another iSCSI target?

You could, but I would personally set up a different datastore on another iSCSI target.

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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jontz
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Thanks for the quick reply!  I have one more question then.  I have another box that I can bring up as a second SAN and create a second target (as we talked about above).  Can I connect both hosts to both targets, so that if one host fails I can move the VMs to my other host?  Is connecting two hosts to a single iSCSI target OK, or will it create problems?  Host1 wouldn't normally be reading/writing to SAN2 (same with Host2/SAN1) unless there was a host failure and the VMs were moved from Host2 to Host1, so would that work?

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vmroyale
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Yes, you can do this and there will be no issues.  You can read more here.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com