Present a LUN to multiple ESX hosts

[sgwisby]

The following thread had info about this question but was closed with no resolution info:

thread1320-1487100

Can someone assist me with this issue.
I want to store VM guests on a SAN LUN and serve them up to the Hosts from the storage location.

Thanks
D

 

[Provogeek]

These types of issues tend to be SAN related, not ESX related. ESX will show what ever you give it, so if your not presenting the LUN to the hardware, ESX will not give you the results you want.

The thread you posted didn't have a solution in it because the original poster found his answer in the SAN, not in addressing ESX.

To help point you in the direction you need to go, what kind of SAN is it? FiberChannel or iSCSI? What make and model is the SAN?

Have you gone through the SAN manual on the VMWare site?

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_san_cfg.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_iscsi_san_cfg.pdf

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[TheLad]

Correct, as the OP of that thread I found my issue was related to the SAN configuration. The HBA configuration mapping was incorrect in my case so I had to modify the host group settings on the SAN configuration so that the ESX servers were in the same host group.

When the SAN config is done, you rescan the Storage Adapters and the extra LUN (or LUNs) should be visible. You can setup the ESX partition on the LUN from the 1st ESX server (format it to VMFS), then when you rescan on the remaining ESX servers, the LUN should be visible in it's VMFS form.

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[sgwisby]

Thanks for the links Provogeek, that explains alot. I was confused about multiple hosts accessing the same LUN, as all my experience with FC SANs has indicated that when using Windows software you could not have more than one host assigned to a single LUN. The VMFS handles this as I learned from the link you provided.
David