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  • 1.  VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 26, 2011 11:01 PM

    Hello everyone!  I have searched around here and can't find any good answer yet so hopefully someone can help.

    We have a cluster of 3 ESXi servers running off a single iSCSI target and frequently need to copy VM's to and from the VMFS file system.

    Using the Converter tool is incredibly slow, so that's out.  WinSCP and FastSCP work at about 5MB and 3MB/sec.  FTP is the best option so far but that's only 8MB/sec.  When we need to copy around a 20GB VM that takes a very long time.  Additionally when we need to make 15 copies of a VM it's impossibly long.

    I was hoping to be able to connect directly to the iSCSI target and mount the filesystem somehow but can't seem to find any way to do that.  Failing that is there any better or faster method?  Perhaps a better FTP server than the proftpd option?

    We were hoping for some local copy method via USB or eSATA but neither seem to work.  USB isn't even detected and I can't get a non-VMFS file system to mount via eSATA.

    If it works better we can set up a linux machine to mount the iSCSI target if file copies can work that way.

    Thanks for any advice!



  • 2.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI
    Best Answer

    Posted Aug 26, 2011 11:10 PM

    NFS?



  • 3.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 27, 2011 12:48 AM

    Actually that's looking like a pretty viable option.  From FreeNAS I can create an NFS share to ESXi and also CIFS to Windows - can anyone forsee a problem with that?



  • 4.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 27, 2011 12:56 AM

    You can have the same folder as a CIFS share and an NFS share. It wouldn't be a good choice when NFS is used as a Datastore. For file sharing it might be useful but can get you into trouble especially with permissions issues.



  • 5.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 27, 2011 01:01 AM

    There could also be issues with file locking.



  • 6.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 27, 2011 01:26 AM

    I'm not worried about concurrent access - and we can manage permissions pretty easily.  It's more about the speed of the copy.  I'll give it a try and let you guys know!



  • 7.  RE: VMDK file copy between windows and ESXi with VMFS over iSCSI

    Posted Aug 27, 2011 12:42 AM

    You can not share the iSCSI LUN between Windows and ESXi. If you did manage to do this you would break ESXi so don't try.