ESXi and hard drives question

[TeeJayHoward]

Newbie to the ESXi scene. Just curious... Can a guest OS access hard drives on the host system directly, or do they all need to be added to a datastore? I just recently replaced a native install of Solaris 11 Express with ESXi 5 and a VM of Solaris 11. I have 14 drives full of data which I would like to connect to my new Solaris 11 VM. If I just plug them in, will ESXi freak out? Will the Solaris VM be able to access them? Will the content be erased? On reboot, will ESXi try to add them to the datastore, or erase them, or anything? How does the storage aspect of it all work? How can I tell if my AOC-SAT2-MV8 controllers are recognized by ESXi? I don't see them under Configuration->Storage Adapters.

(Note: It's on an Opteron 165 system, so the processor doesn't support any sort of virtualization technologies.)

 

[CEpeep]

If you don't see any storage adapters in ESXi, it's (probably) because your controllers aren't supported in ESXi. This doesn't matter if you just want to pass them through to the guest OS, but since your hardware doesn't support that, you need new storage controllers.

Just as an aside, this sounds like a terrible case for an ESXi deploy. 14 internal drives on a system without VT-d/IOMMU or hardware RAID is a nightmare. If you've already gone ahead and rebuilt, your best course of action is to remove all your drives and put them in a separate storage server, or to upgrade the hardware enough to be able to pass the controllers through to the guest. You could also just reinstall Solaris on there and go back to normal if you can't afford new hardware right now.

 

[danswartz]

Agreed.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

you need new storage controllers.

That might be an option, but for the price of a decent PCIe HBA that supports 16 drives, I might as well just build another server.

Just as an aside, this sounds like a terrible case for an ESXi deploy.

I can't say that I disagree, but it's the hardware I've got, and since it doesn't look like you can use a VM on the host system as a workstation (can you?), I'm trying to do what I can.

14 internal drives on a system without VT-d/IOMMU or hardware RAID is a nightmare. If you've already gone ahead and rebuilt, your best course of action is to remove all your drives and put them in a separate storage server, or to upgrade the hardware enough to be able to pass the controllers through to the guest. You could also just reinstall Solaris on there and go back to normal if you can't afford new hardware right now.

I think I might just toss Solaris 11 back on the host system, turn it into an NAS, and build a proper ESXi system.

Thanks for the help. Not the answers I wanted to hear, but that's how it goes sometimes.

 

[CEpeep]

That might be an option, but for the price of a decent PCIe HBA that supports 16 drives, I might as well just build another server.

I can't say that I disagree, but it's the hardware I've got, and since it doesn't look like you can use a VM on the host system as a workstation (can you?), I'm trying to do what I can.

I think I might just toss Solaris 11 back on the host system, turn it into an NAS, and build a proper ESXi system.

Sounds like a plan. You could do everything you want (including using the host system locally, though that works better with a full OS host hypervisor like Xen [Linux] or Hyper-V [Windows]) if you had hardware with VT-d/IOMMU. Make sure your new build incorporates it.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Sounds like a plan. You could do everything you want (including using the host system locally, though that works better with a full OS host hypervisor like Xen [Linux] or Hyper-V [Windows]) if you had hardware with VT-d/IOMMU. Make sure your new build incorporates it.

I do have an i5 setup that I'm using as a workstation. Are you saying that if I replaced my i5-2500K with an i5-2500, I could use the ESXi box as a workstation? If so, how does that work?

 

[CEpeep]

I do have an i5 setup that I'm using as a workstation. Are you saying that if I replaced my i5-2500K with an i5-2500, I could use the ESXi box as a workstation? If so, how does that work?

VT-d requires very specific motherboard and CPU combinations on Intel. You need to find out if your motherboard supports it. It's easier on AMD: any 970 or 990 chipset supports IOMMU, regardless of processor. Some 890FX motherboard support it as well with a BIOS update. This page is from the Xen wiki, but it's the best reference for VT-d/IOMMU support, and should be consistent across all hypervisors that have support for the technology:
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTdHowTo

Totally unrelated but the fact that it's not supported on i3s and certain i5s when the tech itself is part of the motherboard chipset shows that Intel is deliberately crippling their own product lines to force certain consumers into different market segments regardless of their actual needs. For this reason, we have passed on Intel for any systems requiring IOMMU support. i3 with VT-d would have been the ultimate in low-power virtualization, so hopefully Intel gets their act together soon.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

This page is from the Xen wiki, but it's the best reference for VT-d/IOMMU support, and should be consistent across all hypervisors that have support for the technology:
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTdHowTo

Okay, I think I get that. What about ESXi, though? Can the ESXi host be used as a workstation, given proper hardware? I don't see anything in the hypervisor that looks like it allows the guest OS to send the display to the host system, or accept input from host system USB devices.

 

[CEpeep]

Okay, I think I get that. What about ESXi, though? Can the ESXi host be used as a workstation, given proper hardware? I don't see anything in the hypervisor that looks like it allows the guest OS to send the display to the host system, or accept input from host system USB devices.

With video card and USB passthrough, you can use a VM guest as a workstation. A Windows guest would have its own video card that you have passed through. Simply connect a monitor to it and a keyboard and mouse to its passed-through USB ports and you will be able to use it as a workstation. If you want to use the actual host OS as the workstation, look at a hypervisor that runs on top of an existing OS install (like VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, Xen, KVM or Hyper-V).

 

[danswartz]

Depending on what the guest OS is, you can use RDP to access it and run the host headless. As far as USB devices, that's kinda problematic - you can pass specific devices through, but I don't think hot-plug of random USB devices will work so well. If you want to use as a workstation, you'd be better off installing windows/linux on the box, and then install virtualbox, kvm or some-such to virtualize other things.