Using an Areca 1220 in a virtualized environment.

[Fryguy8]

So, I'm experimenting with a server virtualization. I'm currently using FreeBSD w/ jails, but want to change.

I'm looking to use either ESXi or KVM. With a single large (> 2TB) raid array on an Areca 1220. A one-box whitebox solution (no separate SAN or anything for the storage. Integrated on the same system).

One of the issues that I'm running into while looking is how to manage shared data between VMs. Currently with jails I cheat and use nullfs to mount the same FS on multiple jails. With KVM, I can simulate this with NFS on the host, which I think would work fine.

How would I accomplish something like this with ESXi? Would I create a guest OS that runs NFS? Or is the hypervisor capable of being an NFS server itself? How would something like this work with a greater than 2TB filesystem?

Guess I just don't know much about ESXi, and don't really know where to go to learn more about the fundamentals of it.

 

[Child of Wonder]

No, the ESXi hypervisor cannot run any services of any kind. You would need to have a guest OS act as a file server.

If you need a larger than 2TB file system you will need to create a few 2TB LUNs and then combine them for one large VMFS datastore (up to 32x 2TB for 64TB total). Then you can only present 2TB virtual hard drives to the guest OS and it will have to combine them using LVM if it needs a file system larger than 2TB.

 

[/dev/null]

Btw: I've had very bad performance with multiple hypervisors using freebsd/zfs as a virtualized fileserver. YMMV of course...