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Moving 2k3 Server

K

koolaidkitten

Gawd
Joined
Apr 28, 2006
Messages
632
Hi, I just recently got into tinkering around with ESX.
Just for the heck of it i decided to move my 2k3 Fileserver over to a VM within ESX 4.1.
However when I try to add the drives to the server it seems the only option I have is to format the drives to the native vmfs filesystem. So currently I'm doing it the hardway by loading the drives on a windows box and transfering the files over to the network to the server. Later on however I remember reading somewhere that you can do something called a "passthrough" on the sata controller the drive are on where it supposedly kinda unlinks it from the ESX host and has it talk directly to the VM or something like that as if it was a bare metal machine, therefore enabling it to directly read the NTFS filesystem. Is this true? Where is that option? and does that enable faster performance or other benefits?
 
This requires something called vt-d (amd calls it iommu, IIRC). Requires support by the CPU and the mobo and the BIOS. If all that works, it can give near native performance. Note that the entire controller must be passed to the guest, so whatever disk(s) esxi is using cannot be on that controller. Note that that VM will lose a lot of capabilities like snapshots, vmotion, etc... If you don't care about that, go for it... Or at least you can maybe pull the data off to vmware virtual disks and then undo the passthru.
 
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Passthrough theoretically has higher performance (though in regular use for a personal file server, you probably won't notice) but it removes features that make ESXi stand out as a robust and useful platform. Avoid using it unless you are sure you will see a benefit and don't need any of the features you lose by using it.
 
I only use my server for inhome tinkering and the occasional LanParty so I don't need every ounce of performance. Plus I don't think my platform supports vt-d, its a old socket939 box. I think I'll just skip that for now especially since I wanna tinker with all possible features. Thank you everyone for your input.
 
Question: if you run the vmware converter, can you specify your data drives and have them migrated that way?
 
danswartz said:
Question: if you run the vmware converter, can you specify your data drives and have them migrated that way?
Click to expand...

Yes, but it really depends on what you mean by that. It'll gleefully convert data drives, but it depends on what you want it to DO with them. VMDK? Sure. RDM? Eh, not really. DirectPath? No.
 
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