Openfiler VM Setup Question

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Guys been nagging a few people on similar subjects to do with a proposed ESX setup and using Openfiler as a SAN. Am i right in thinking to save space and having to buy another server/Cheap PC to run my SAN on. I could install ESX onto one of my ML115 Servers (going to have a 2x ML115 server setup to run things like clustering & Vmotion on) and put Openfiler on it as a VM, stick the 3Ware 9550 RAID card into the server with the disks and run it off that?

I take it if that's possible I would have to install Openfiler on a single disk not connected to the RAID setup (say the same disk used to install ESX on) then only setup the RAID card for the Openfiler VM and block it out for the rest of the VM's as one server obviously wouldn't have the card installed and may cause issues when moving VM's from one physical server to another.

Is this possible and is it advisable to run openfiler like this.

 

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Ummm, no that wouldn't work. The OF software would need to see the raid card directly (it loads the 3ware drivers and if it was a VM it would only use the disk space allocated within the VM).

You have two options, either make a physical server with the raid controller and use it that way or create a VM and use a large SATA drive and work from it within the VM. I would advise against the second approach if you want to play with v-motion and HA however because one of your hosts would be hosting the OF SAN.

The other thing to do is rather than using an OF san then might be to use the 3ware controller in one of the ESX servers and just use it as vmfs that way, unfortunately none of the nice iscsi or nfs if you do it that way tho.

 

ahh man never simple is it lol. Cheers Simon, thought I could do it the way I described using a seperate disk from the SAN to install an openfiler VM on. Looks like I'll have to go back to plan A and build a seperate SAN.

 

What about your dells? Pop them into the mixing bowl and you should be good.

 

Was going to use the dell to be the openfiler SAN but the 3ware 9550 RAID card isn't compatible by the looks of it as I get resource error (Can't remember the exact error) just after the BIOS.

 

Does esx/i install on the dell

 

Never tried mate as I run Hyper-V on it. I think I read it does work if you install it on a USB pen drive like the ML115. This is ESXi but I'm assuming ESX is compatible with more hardware from what I've read so might work out the box.

 

Cool stuff, try it out on the pen drive and then you'll have 2 more hosts(and not need to flatten your hyper-v setup as you will be using OF)

 

Yeah probably going to keep the Dell as a Hyper-V setup. Gutted the RAID card doesn't work on it but so is life lol