Comments on: P2V strategy for a Physical Server with an iSCSI Partition

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:41:11 +0000

Just to be clear:

You have to create a iSCSI server / service / target inside a VM.

The ESX iSCSI config in the vSwitch Networking is not for sharing
server storage to other hosts, but for connecting to the shared iSCSI
Storage Source (VMs in your case)

Yes, any of those products mentioned can be iSCSI targets.

By: dhhruvarya

dhhruvarya — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:15:35 +0000

I personally thank you for your effort to send this response, I shall certainly try the way you have mentioned here - as below:

" You can build a VM and give it virtual hard drives (.vmdks) that use

up 80% of your local VMFS datastore. Leave 20% free space for ESX

health. From within that VM, configure a NFS or iSCSI share/target.

Use Openfiler, FreeSAN, or even MS 2003 R2. As long as your ESX hosts

are on the same ip subnet as your NFS/iSCSI VM then they can both see

the shared storage."

I do not want to try the NFS part but I am more interested in iSCSI share/target. Using iSCSI share/target, do I still need to use OpenFiler, or I can see those .vmdks disks through iSCSI share/target.

Thanks, my friend, truly appreciated.
Dhhruv Arya
Network Engineer

Tel: 905-362-8550 x 216
Fax: 905-362-8555
Email: dhhruv.arya@xcino.com
Web: www.xcino.com

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By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:43:43 +0000

You will not be able to share the local storage on your ESX hosts with
each other through the Service Console OS (ESX). You do have some
options from VMs running on your local storage.

You could use xtravirt's xvs (free) or Lefthand's VSA to create a
virtual SAN out of one or both of the local storage on each ESX hosts.

OR

You can build a VM and give it virtual hard drives (.vmdks) that use
up 80% of your local VMFS datastore. Leave 20% free space for ESX
health. From within that VM, configure a NFS or iSCSI share/target.
Use Openfiler, FreeSAN, or even MS 2003 R2. As long as your ESX hosts
are on the same ip subnet as your NFS/iSCSI VM then they can both see
the shared storage.

Search vmetc.com for any of these products or local storage concepts.

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:41:11 +0000

By: dhhruvarya

dhhruvarya — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:15:35 +0000

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:43:43 +0000

By: dhhruvarya

dhhruvarya — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:44:57 +0000

Please advise me – I need some help with the ESX – As described below – Please help me if any body can help.

I have two ESX hosts ESX1, and ESX2. On ESX1 have 9 HDrives, where I am using 3 drives with RAID 5 for the ESX OS, and the remaining 6 HDrives I want to share as a shared storage with other ESX hosts in the cluster. Presently I have a cluster with these 2 ESX hosts in that cluster.

I am unable to see the storage on the ESX1 on to the ESX2. Please what do I need to do, I have iScsi enabled and portgroup (VMKernel) enabled in ESX1. Please help me.

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:06:11 +0000

Omar,

Thanks for the insight. Good stuff to know about the MS shares process
and thanks for the links. In my recent scenario the customer
disconnected the iSCSI volume before p2v and the new VM did end up
with a different drive letter on reattach.

As far as the dedicated vSwitch versuis combining a portgroup on the
ESX iSCSI vSwitch, you are right. It depends on how many NICs/ports
your ESX host can provide. Dedicating 2 for VM iSCSI traffic is best
for performance in I/O greedy VMs which means 8 to 10 NIC ports in
each ESX host!