multiple hypervisors

[shaunom]

Hi,
(newbie to both virtualisation and NAS - apologies if this question is blindingly obvious)

I currently have 3 servers all running ESXi baremetal hypervisor with ~3VM's on each, all running on locally attached storage (regular HDD's)
One of the VM's is running windows server 2008R2 as a file server.

I would like to migrate the filesystems for all VM's and onto my NAS (I am going to setup replication on the NAS to a remote NAS to give myself resilience to local failure / theft).
Would also like to ditch the Svr2008 file server and use the NAS directly as a file server.

Would this be possible and if so, is it simply just a case of moving the VMs to a different location and mounting the NAS as some form of storage device in the VMware console or do i do something at the dos hypervisor level ?

Any thoughts or signposting much appreciated.

Thanks,
S.

[millhaus]

Would this be possible and if so, is it simply just a case of moving the VMs to a different location and mounting the NAS as some form of storage device in the VMware console or do i do something at the dos hypervisor level ?

I actually don't understand your targets.
I am not a VMware expert (we do use XenServer)
But if you have 3x physical VMware ESXi hosts, you should create a pool of those 3 servers.
This pool now gains shared access to your QNAP NAS via iSCSI or NFS i.e.
Move the VM data from local storage to NAS.

Also keep in mind of creating a redundant network between QNAP NAS and VMware hosts (redundant switch and cabling)

[shaunom]

Thanks for the reply,
Something I didnt make clear was that i'm not using the full pro version of VMWare vSphere,
Instead i'm running 3 individual (and £free) hypervisors (http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere- ... rview.html)
Each hypervisor has no knowledge of the others and just manages the VM's on that box.
S.

[shaunom]

My goal is just to consolidate down all storage underpinning the VM's + my file server into a single, easy to maintain and backup platform (the NAS)
S.

[shaunom]

Sorted,
Just a quick update for anyone else reading this who might find it helpful.
I was able to setup a directory on the NAS and enable NFS on that directory. This enabled me to mount the drive as network attached storage within ESXi and i could subsequently copy the VM's files over to this directory then re-mount the VM's running from the NAS.
As for the file server, i simply enabled windows file services and added a new directory, selected the AD users who should have access then mapped it as a drive instead of the old file server.

All done.
S.

[PiroNet]

Sorted,
Just a quick update for anyone else reading this who might find it helpful.
I was able to setup a directory on the NAS and enable NFS on that directory. This enabled me to mount the drive as network attached storage within ESXi and i could subsequently copy the VM's files over to this directory then re-mount the VM's running from the NAS.
As for the file server, i simply enabled windows file services and added a new directory, selected the AD users who should have access then mapped it as a drive instead of the old file server.

All done.
S.

You're doing right, well done!
Now what about one of your requirements, that is setup replication of the NAS, especially replicate the VM's?

[shaunom]

Thanks.
I'm going to migrate the remaining vm's first to check performance and then once I have a solution that works well will buy another QNAP bad and setup the online replication.
(that's the plan - TBC)
S.

[PiroNet]

... will buy another QNAP bad and setup the online replication.
(that's the plan - TBC)
S.

That's the issue...

QNAP doesn't have a proper replication mechanism for live VM's running on NFS or iSCSI datastores. Live VM's are locked by the host owning them and therefore basic replication such RSync or RTRR are not feasible in this scenario. You will have first to backup the VMs then replicate them remotely using eventually those tools. In this case RPO is about 24 hours. That is you tolerate 24 hours of data lost. You may want to look at GhettoVCB (http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760) for a free backup solution.

Now you can look at Veeam Backup & Replication (http://go.veeam.com/ppc-vm-backup-1.html?gclid=COrfptazibACFcshtAody1FkMA) which include an advanced replication feature that might fit your replication needs. RPO can be reduced down to 15 minutes. Near synchronous replication. But this has a cost associated to it... You should understand that those backup tools use VMware snapshot techniques which require the NAS to be 'fast' enough to run backups/snapshots while holding live VMs. So be sure to pick up the right QNAP NAS for today's VM's requirements (disk space and IO's) but also for the next 3 years.

[shaunom]

uurgh, had a feeling it wouldn't be quite that simple !
I anticipated that the NAS would replicate the IO semi-real time.

Thanks for the suggestions - i'll check them out soon as poss.

S.