Best Way to share NFS for ESXI

[kirlcheah]

Hi All,

I have been wanting to share ESXI to ZFS natively using NFS. I have 2 box of X8SIL-F and wanted to connect to a datastore using Brocade 1020 cards. I have them connected at the following way.
A, B = X8SIL-F (ESXI)
C = ESXI, VM Passthrough, IBM M1015 to 24 HDD, running OmniOS)

A (ESXI) - B (ESXI)
A (ESXI) - C (ESXI, ZFS)
B (ESXI) - C (ESXI, ZFS)

All these are connected using Active Twinax Cables.

Is this configuration supported? How do I get the ESXI in Box A and B to get the data from C as using Twinax does not have IP for the VMNet3.
Thanks.
Regards.

 

[gea]

NAS protocols like NFS or CIFS need a regular tcp/ip nic to work.
I suppose, you can only share ZFS filesystems on C as FC blockdevices (via Comstar).
This is fast but does not allow concurrent access to the same target. From A or B they are treated like a local disk.

 

[kirlcheah]

Thanks Gea. But I have read that this card should support both TCP/IP and also FCoe. Do I need to change to other means to get it running TCP/IP?

Thanks.

 

[gea]

From http://mediapool.getthespec.com/media.pdf?m=KpAyxZ6ntSYzugD066QVYw==&v=PD
about the 1020 CNA

Q
What is a CNA?
A
A Converged Network Adapter, or CNA, is a new type of server I/O adapter that supports
both data networking (TCP/IP) and storage netw
orking (Fibre Channel) traffic on a single
I/O adapter using two new technologies: CEE and FCoE.

So you should be able to use it like a standard nic adapter, either
- with ESXi drivers as a 10G nic, connected to a virtual switch
You can then add a vmxnet3 vnix to OmniOS that is connected to the same vswitch

- or as a pass-through device to OmniOS, running with OmniOS drivers

 

[whitey]

If it's a 3 host all-in-one config I found it extremely difficult to accomplish all that I wanted to elegantly until I brought a 10G switch into the mix, then life got a LOT easier. With a 2 node cluster and dedicated SAN all over 10G direct connect maybe that will be a little easier. I would have to dig up my nightmarish notes to see exactly the issues/walls I ran into but it got ugly pretty quick if memory serves me correct w/ all the functionality I desired/requirements I had.

 

[kirlcheah]

I have actually solve this. Setting up to different subnets as per Gea in another thread, it's working properly now.

Thanks.