topic Re: Sharing LUN between 2 VMs... in MSA Storage

Sharing LUN between 2 VMs...

Sean Meuser — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:48:49 GMT

I have 2 VM boxes that need access to the same LUN. What is the best way to share this LUN between the two Virtual machines?

I am currently using an EVA4400 FC SAN environment and using vShpere 4. Both VMs are Windows Server 2008.

Thank you.

Re: Sharing LUN between 2 VMs...

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:25:58 GMT

You need to set up an RDM (raw device mapping) to a separate virtual disk that will contain the data. Check the VMware documentation:

Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40_u1/vsp_40_u1_mscs.pdf

Please note that this will NOT give you a file system that is concurrently shared by both Windows servers (e.g. you create a file on server A E:\ and you immediately see it on server B E:\). NTFS is not a shared FS and you must buy 3rd party software.

Re: Sharing LUN between 2 VMs...

Jan Soska — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:14:06 GMT

Hello Uwe,
could you recomend a 3rd party software which provide cluster option for ntfs? We think of similar setup on 2 VM's, with no success yet.
Thanks
Jan

Re: Sharing LUN between 2 VMs...

Sheldon Smith — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:46:04 GMT

Why would you not use Microsoft Clustering between the two Windows VMs?

Re: Sharing LUN between 2 VMs...

Jan Soska — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:54:38 GMT

We want use Windows Standard for our purpose. Is Microsoft Clustering available for standard version? We have no experience with it.

Jan