VMware Cloud Community
davidylyl
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-23-2016 12:25 PM

Using Windows Storage Server 2012 as iSCSI Target in Production Environment

My searches in this forum haven't yielded discussions on this.  Please forgive me if I missed previous posts.

Would you use a Windows Server 2012 R2 as your (only) iSCSI target / shared storage for your 3 hosts in a production system?  We are looking at a new system with 3 Lenovo RD550 servers, each with 16 cores and 128G RAM, and 1 Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 with lots of SSD drives and connecting it all with dual 10G Ethernet for the iSCSI network.

The cost savings over even an inexpensive EMC is pretty substantial.  My concern is that Windows servers need care and feeding, and storage systems need to just run (and run, and run, and...)  What do you think?

Thanks

6 Replies
davidylyl
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-26-2016 06:29 AM

Bump - anybody?  Please?
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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎08-26-2016 10:22 AM

I don't know if WSS is supported, search here: VMware Compatibility Guide - Storage/SAN Search

Would an SDS solution such as VSAN not be an option for you?


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vfk
Expert
Expert
‎08-29-2016 08:05 AM

Stick with supported platform from HCL, running production workload on unsupported systems is asking for trouble.

--- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider the use of the Helpful or Correct buttons to award points. vfk Systems Manager / Technical Architect VCP5-DCV, VCAP5-DCA, vExpert, ITILv3, CCNA, MCP
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NetxRunner
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎09-21-2016 08:39 AM

Sure you can.

All you need is a free Starwind StarWind Virtual SAN Free that installs natively on Windows and provides an iSCSI target for your VMware environment. It has additional RAM and SSD-based caching capabilities and is certified with VMware.

Fluxblocker
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-06-2017 05:45 AM

Warmest greetings, fellow vSphere aficionados. I am jumping into the tail end of this, so please accept my most humble apologies. I manage a tiny datacenter with only one SAN storage array.  I would like to set up a server just long enough to migrate some VMs to, because I need to reinitialize the storage array. I certainly don't want to use this thing for production storage long-term; only to migrate VMs to and then migrate back once the array is "upgraded", shall we say. I'll try out this StarWind app, and pass along any useful information I might stumble across along the way.

Many thanks, and Elastic Sky X forever!

Sam

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