Samba shared storage on a VMware environment
Samba shared storage on a VMware environment
It's a feasible concept. You could set up a two-node Linux Samba SMB file server cluster within a VMware ESXi environment, using shared storage from the same SAN attached to the VMware cluster. This would allow you to carry out maintenance tasks while keeping your file server always available for clients.
hi @bcredeur97 Interesting question actually. I won't know why it should not work. Do you mean that VMware should use this samba to store the virtual storage? (SAN solution) First thing that comes up to me is glusterfs with Samba not sure how you should set this up though. But in theory it can work.
essentially you manage a clustered file server like any other, but it runs inside an existing VMware cluster that uses a SAN for storage. The two virtual machines share the same storage resources. if one fails, the other takes over automatically to ensure uninterrupted service. it’s a straightforward idea—just hard to locate specific details online, so I reached out for help.
This sounds promising... but would it really need double the capacity? It seems like each server would manage its own storage and sync with the other, offering failover capability. However, this would mean our 8TB file server would need 16TB, which is impractical given we're using enterprise SSDs. The expense would be too high for just failover purposes. This approach isn't ideal for backup; we should use a different method. What I'm after is two machines that share the same storage, even if it's not feasible right now.
If Samba shares are stored on shared storage, you can use a single volume. However, for genuine failover, you should deploy servers in HA. Running two VMs with Samba failover on one host would result in minimal downtime, which isn't justified by the effort or extra clustering required.
they wouldn't run on a single host; they'd stay separate across the cluster using the same storage pool. Backup and disaster recovery would need different approaches, focusing on high availability by keeping one file server active while others remain online. I doubt this works in ESXi since sharing storage prevents moving VMs between hosts.
Article about clustering with VMDK sharing among virtual machines from Abhilash Hb's blog.