Remote mount a datastrore

[cbbs70b]

All;

    I am running ESXi 5.5 on two servers. I have a locally attached datastore on each one but I would like to "cross mount" them. What I mean by that is that I would like to mount the datastore on server1 onto server2 and vice versa. My question is this: is it possible to even do that? Any insight at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks;

Frank

[daphnissov]

No, you cannot do that with ESXi.

[GayathriS]

Local storage of one esxi cannot be mounted  to another ESXi unless its a VSAN.

Mark it as correct / Helpfull

[vijayrana968]

Technically not possible, you need SAN (ISCSI, Fibre Channel) or NFS for shared storage.

[daphnissov]

Technically, in that case, it ceases to be "local" storage and becomes clustered storage. So it's not the same concept.

[cbbs70b]

Thank you, all of you for all the very quick responses. You've saved me a boatload of time going down a path that would of been a dead end.

Regards;

FSD

[ashishsingh1508]

You can use third party solutions like Nutanix etc to do that.

[RonnyNorway]

The only option you have is to use a VM that utilizes the Storage and then shares it out as NFS again. If you have for instance a FreeNas VM on each server that utilizes the Whole local Storage, then you can Connect the esx servers to both datastores.

However it is not recommended as you will NOT have redundancy.

It is however a solution if you have redundant systems residing on both hosts, and you only wish to use the Storage for visibility. Usability for temporary migrations (for maintenance or similar) is then ok if you have room on each datastore for all VMs that needs to be Powered on.