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Imagine a pair of servers with fiber channel adapters. Normally each one can connect to the shared SAN storage using its HBA and fiber cords,

Now, eliminating the SAN, is it possible to interconnect these two ESXi servers directly with fiber cord and mount each others LUN in a shared manner?

In other words [I think!] : Can we publish the internal storage of an ESXi server with a given World Wide Name to the other directly attached ESXi? (If not, what about iSCSI?)

Anyway I want the storage traffic travel through the fiber.

F.I.V
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is it possible to interconnect these two ESXi servers directly with fiber cord and mount each others LUN in a shared manner?

No.

Chopper3
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  • Wouldn't VSAN do close to what he wants? – Nick Young Feb 21 '16 at 04:07
  • Well, No fears, lets face it. I really expected to here "No". (And probably it says why virtual SAN exists!). – F.I.V Feb 21 '16 at 12:55
  • Actually I was feeling happy to see that the LEDs of HBA stop flashing when interconnecting two servers (like when link established between SAN and server). But I couldn't measure the level of impossibility to perform what I wanted. – F.I.V Feb 21 '16 at 13:01
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    To be honest you can indeed directly link two servers via FC, it works fine, but you need one or both to be an initiator and one or both to be a client - and ESXi can only act as an FC client. That said there is a protocol (RFC 4338 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4338) that allows for IP over FC, I had to use this once to get me out of trouble but it took about an hour to work right and was fragile as hell - and again there's no support for it in ESXi - just thought you might be interested :) – Chopper3 Feb 21 '16 at 17:39
  • Great, your last comment is what I was actually seeking for. Thanks for sharing your great experience. Now this is the answer to my question. Thanks again. This portion deserves to be part of the answer:ESXi can only act as an FC client – F.I.V Feb 22 '16 at 08:57