"Correct" way to create a shared partition for multiple VMs in VmWare?

Question

VMware

Greetings.

After some time, I will have to assemble and configure a server with VMWare ESXi, within which several virtual machines will need to work with the same set of files.

At my current level of understanding of storage virtualization, I will need to start a separate VM, which will become an iSCSI target and all client VMs will be iSCSI initiators for it.

Is this the correct technique, or am I missing something fundamental? Are there any particularities of this approach when implemented on the basis of ESXi?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Based on the experience of using iSCSI, I can say that it will not work the way you want. It will look something like if you distributed a data cable from a SATA disk to several machines at the same time in parallel. Perhaps clustered file systems will work with this option, I have not yet seen a real example. Therefore, as mentioned above, it is better to use a network ball.
By performance. iSCSI-target is a block device on which you will create a file system that runs on top of this block device. It is possible that you will not notice a strong difference with SMB.

Answer 2

It is not worth fencing iSCSI on virtual machines, make NFS or SMB a ball and give it to other virtual machines.
If possible, make a separate physical storage for data storage. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket.

Answer 3

NTFS does not allow multiple servers to work with the same disk at the same time, I encountered this when, although I shared the storage system in this way, I had to make two lis and give them to different file servers, and between them already do a failover