Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
2 Posts
0
2419
April 19th, 2013 09:00
Mounting an NFS/NTFS LUN as file server data drive on Windows 2008 R2 Server
I have a VMWare vSphere 5.1 guest running Windows 2008 R2 SP 1 as a file server that has a 1 TB VMDK file as the D: drive (NTFS) where all data is stored. That data consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. files in user folders and shared folders controlled under Active Directory.
To take advantage of de-duplication – I want to create an NFS LUN on my EMC VNXe3150 SAN as an NTFS drive and copy all data from the D: drive on the file server to this new drive and mount the new drive to the file server as the D: drive.
Is there an established method for this process?
No Events found!
Sriky
45 Posts
0
April 23rd, 2013 04:00
Hello,
first you will have to create a "shared folder server" under "settings" to create a NFS datastore and can be presented to the windows VM in two ways:
1. Install unix services for windows and present the NFS datastore created directly to the windows VM.(Requires VM network to be able to ping to VNXe shared folder server)
2. Create a NFS datastore and present it to ESX server and add a new VMDK for the windows virtual machine by selecting the newly created NFS datastore.
By selecting option 1, you will not be using the VMkernel and not adding load to the already existing iSCSI traffic.
if you do not have VAAI for VNX/VNXe installed on ESXi 5.1 and select option 2 then you can only create a thin VMDK on the NFS datastore and hence decrease in disk performance.
Please choose which ever option is suitable for you.
Regards,
Sri
JoshRountree1
10 Posts
0
April 23rd, 2013 06:00
I may be wrong by I think the term LUN is only applicable when referring to iSCSI.
If you want to take advantage of deduplication I would put the current VMDK you are using for your D: on an NFS datastore that has deduplication enabled. You could also create a CIFS share on the VNXe and migrate to it, but migrating your users to a new 1 TB vmdk is no small task (I don't know how many users you have though).
In my opinion I would leave the vmdk as it is, and move it (storage vmotion) to an NFS datastore with deduplication enabled. BUT, I would read the documentation on VNXe deduplication first, you might not get the savings you anticipate. It's been a while since I read the documentation but from my memory deduplication is only available on NFS datastores, processes when the system is idle, and will only consider files with a modified date greater than 30 days.
bzylstra
2 Posts
0
April 24th, 2013 06:00
Josh,
So a VMDK will function on a non-VMFS drive?
Thanks,
JoshRountree1
10 Posts
0
April 24th, 2013 07:00
Someone speak up if I'm wrong, but a VMDK is just a file, like a *.docx, *.txt, etc. You can copy it to any file system whether it be NTFS, NFS, Ext3, VMFS etc.
BUT, in the specific case of file systems that Vshpere can use for file systems, a VMDK can reside on an iSCSI VMFS file system or an NFS based file system.
Cliff Notes:
VMDK can work on NFS or iSCSI VMFS