A while ago Bouke G. of Jume wrote a nice blog on how to set up shared storage without a SAN appliance. In short you just create an additional disk(scsi id 1:0) on the first ESX VM. Close down VMware Workstation and edit your .vmx file. I would suggest a copy and paste of the following lines and remove the duplicate lines. (scsi1:0.filename etc)

scsi1.present = “TRUE”
scsi1.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
scsi1.sharedBus = “VIRTUAL”
scsi1:0.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:0.fileName = “D:\Virtual Machines\shared_disk.vmdk”
scsi1:0.mode = “independent-persistent”
scsi1:0.redo = “”

disk.locking = “FALSE”
diskLib.dataCacheMaxSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCacheMaxReadAheadSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCacheMinReadAheadSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCachePageSize = “4096″
diskLib.maxUnsyncedWrites = “0″

Now copy the correct .vmx entries to the second ESX VM’s .vmx file and just boot them up. It’s as simple as that. Yes I know setting up iSCSI isn’t difficult but this will save you precious memory, especially when running this as a demo kit on your laptop!

This is a post from Duncan Epping - Yellow-Bricks.com.

The agenda has been announced, and it’s going to be an awesome day especially with guys like Eric Sloof, Richard Garsthagen and Bouke Groenescheij presenting. I’ll be there, and so should you guys, and if you see me walking around just come up and say hi!

This is a post from Duncan Epping - Yellow-Bricks.com.

connect-viserver MYVISERVER
$myCol = @()
ForEach ($VM in (Get-VM))
{
$MyDetails = “” | select-Object Name, HAL, NumvCPU
$MYDetails.Name = $VM.Name
$Hal = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $VM.Name -Query “SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity where ClassGuid = ‘{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}’” | Select Name
$MYDetails.HAL = $Hal.Name
$MYDetails.NumvCPU = $VM.NumCPU
$myCol += $MYDetails
}
$myCol

This is a post from Duncan Epping - Yellow-Bricks.com.

Anyway, I will also be looking into changing my wordpress theme, so if anyone got some good tips or is missing something at the moment let me know and I’ll add it to my “under consideration” list.

This is a post from Duncan Epping - Yellow-Bricks.com.

@echo off

:DRIVER_HAL_UPDATE
SET HAL=

IF %NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%==1 (
devcon.exe /find @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 | find /i “Multiprocessor” > NUL && SET HAL=ACPIAPIC_UP
devcon.exe /find @ROOT\PCI_HAL\0000 | find /i “Multiprocessor” > NUL && SET HAL=MPS_UP
) ELSE (
devcon.exe /find @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 | find /i “Uniprocessor” > NUL && SET HAL=ACPIAPIC_MP
devcon.exe /find @ROOT\PCI_HAL\0000 | find /i “Uniprocessor” > NUL && SET HAL=MPS_MP
)

IF NOT “%HAL%”==”" (
ECHO.
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO Installing %HAL% HAL
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO.

devcon.exe sethwid @ROOT\PCI_HAL\0000 := !E_ISA_UP !ACPIPIC_UP !ACPIAPIC_UP !ACPIAPIC_MP !MPS_UP !MPS_MP !SGI_MPS_MP !SYSPRO_MP !SGI_MPS_MP
devcon.exe sethwid @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 := !E_ISA_UP !ACPIPIC_UP !ACPIAPIC_UP !ACPIAPIC_MP !MPS_UP !MPS_MP !SGI_MPS_MP !SYSPRO_MP !SGI_MPS_MP
devcon.exe sethwid @ROOT\PCI_HAL\0000 := +%HAL%
devcon.exe sethwid @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 := +%HAL%
devcon.exe update %windir%\inf\hal.inf %HAL%
devcon.exe ReScan

ECHO.
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO Rebooting
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO.
devcon.exe Reboot
) ELSE (
ECHO.
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO Correct HAL Detected
ECHO —————————————-
ECHO.
)
GOTO :EOF

There’s a topic on VMTN about this, read it. You need the Microsoft DevCon util, which is part of the support tools, for more info on devcon click here. Mike Laverick’s paper can be found here. Thanks for pointing this out Xing.

This is a post from Duncan Epping - Yellow-Bricks.com.