Windows 2008 introduced the ability to use NFS shares, enabling the server to be used as a storage target.

The team at Xtravirt have been working hard as usual and have released a step by step guide of the process to setup and host NFS shares on a Windows 2008 server and connection to an ESXi 4 host. This can be used with a VI in a Box solution.

The scenario described assumes that this is being setup on a single server which includes Domain Controller functions. It is designed for personal testing only and not an advocation as a production solution.
Key Concepts:

* Install and configuration of Service for Network File System
* Install and configuration of Identity Management for UNIX
* Adding NFS storage to an ESX host

Download the paper here: http://xtravirt.com/nfs-storage-configuration-for-vsphere-using-windows-2008

On Friday VMware released to the community a video demonstrating how the new Storage I/O Control (SIOC) feature, part of the upcoming vSphere 4.1, works.

SIOC provides the capability to define quality of service prioritization for the I/O activity on a single host or a cluster of hosts.
The prioritization, which can be enable or disable on specific datastores, is enforced through shares and limits.
The ESX/ESXi hosts monitors the latency in communication with the datastore of choice. As soon such latency exceeds a defined threshold the datastore is considered congested.
At that point all VMs accessing that datastore are prioritized according to their defined shares.
The administrator can even define the amount of I/O operations per second (IOPS) that each virtual machine can reach.

The video shows SIOC in action and is really worth checking out!

This article’s content was primarily sourced from Yellow Bricks!

I’ve just been informed of an issue that occurs when running ESX in a VM on ESX.  The team at PHD Virtual stumbled across this gem while trying to do CBT backups of their “ESX on ESX” sandbox environment.

It turns out that if you enable Changed-Block-Tracking (CBT) on the ESX virtul machine (VM) it changes how the VMDKs are presented to the ESX virual machine, causing it to be unable to mount!

So now your ESX VM has no storage!

As soon as you disable Changed-Block-Tracking on the VM the disks reappear when you rescan the scsi adapter or reboot the ESX virtual machine!

I’d be interested to see who else can replicate this?

More info on this issue as I get it!

NFS is a great storage solution within a VMware vSphere environment, but when the connection to the NFS server is lost, you’ll find yourself in a whole bunch of trouble!

In most circumstances some virtual machines are still connected to the NFS Datastore and since it’s in use, you cannot delete and recreate it. In the end there’s no other alternative than rebooting the ESX host, or is there……

If you want to find out how to remount an NFS Datastore you should watch this online training from “Virtualization Guru” Eric Sloof!

Remount an NFS Datastore without rebooting from Eric Sloof NTPRO.NL on Vimeo.

Since the launch of esXpress 4.0 approximatly one week ago there have been a number of blog reactions out in the virtualization community (all positive).

In this article we thought we’d give a quick rundown of some of the main bloggers out there to follow!
As usual one of the first people to jump on anything virtual is Alessandro Perilli from Virtualization.info!
Because of this we’re going to assume he’s the “King of Virtualization blogging” and list the top 5 AFTER him

Other bloggers out there who you should follow to gain a true insight into the virtualization community and what is going on include:

	Rich Brambly @ VM/ETC
	Scott Lowe @ ScottLowe.org
	Duncan Epping @ Yellow-Bricks.com
	Eric Sloof @ NTPro.nl
	Eric Siebert @ VMware-Land

Nirvanix offers a number of offsite storage based services/solutions, via their globally disbursed and interconnected storage delivery network (SDN). The SDN “intelligently stores, delivers and processes storage requests in the best network location, providing the optimal user experience”.

According to Nirvanix a true cloud based storage provider such as themselves must offer the following four key components: Global virtualization, unlimited scalability, continuous availability and a usage based service.

Simon Seagrave from TechHead had the opportunity to catch up with Nirvanix’s Product Manager, Peter Pistek to find out more about their products and service offerings:

Peter Pistek – Nirvanix (Cloud Storage) from Simon Seagrave on Vimeo.