0

I have Windows7 and I need to share it's disks to neighbouring ESXi server. I want to use FCoE. How to?

Reason for using FCoE: Which storage protocol to use for ESX storage?

EDIT: The NICs are Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S which appear to be working with Intel's 82599 drivers.

Community
  • 1
Henno
  • 1,046
  • 5
  • 19
  • 33
  • While I cannot answer your question directly, I recommend you use iSCSI. – SpacemanSpiff Apr 07 '11 at 13:35
  • it was my answer that was accepted in the question you refer to but that was an answer aimed at professionally designed and deployed datacenter type VMWare deployments - not some homegrown 'sticks and gum' knocked-together oddity. Why don't you explain the situation a LOT more to see if we can help you as FCoE almost certainly isn't the answer to your question. – Chopper3 Apr 07 '11 at 15:21
  • @Chopper3 we've been running ESX 3.5 on two Poweredge 1950 8core servers, 32GB RAM each, redundantly FC-connected to EMC Clariion CX300. The purpose is to offer VPS to our customers. They run DC, TS, Exchange, PostgreSQL, MSSQL and some LAMP servers. Since we ran out of EMC support and are experiencing mediocre to slow I/O bottleneck on the storage, we decided that we won't buy more support and additional superexpensive fiber spindles but instead get a new box with SSD and SATA and 10GbE. That box is Supermicro 2U 24bay server with 12x intel X25-E SLC drives and 12x 10k RPM SATA drives. – Henno Apr 09 '11 at 10:30
  • @Chopper3 Windows7 is what is installed currently for testing purposes. I merely hoped to avoid spending time installing and configuring another OS before testing the array against ESX. – Henno Apr 09 '11 at 10:35

2 Answers2

1

You're looking for a Fibre Channel over Ethernet software package that can run on Windows and provide an FCoE Target. So far as I am aware, that can not be done yet. This is likely to change in the next year or so, but as of right now (4/7/2011) it can't.

sysadmin1138
  • 131,083
  • 18
  • 173
  • 296
  • I found this: http://www.bravofiles.com/driver-Intel_28R_29-82599-10-Gigabit-Dual-Port-Network-Connection-with-FCoE.html What would that "...with FCoE" there mean? – Henno Apr 09 '11 at 09:16
  • @Henno That's for an FCoE *initiator* not a target. – sysadmin1138 Apr 09 '11 at 12:18
0

You can install VirtualBox at Win7. In VirtualBox you should install the latest Openfiler (with FCoE). May be it is a good idea to pass one (or more) physical hdd to Openfiler VM.

But for production usage will be batter to configure dedicated server with Openfiler.

And now you can easily configure Openfiler as FCoE Target.

BBK
  • 505
  • 1
  • 5
  • 18