I've been using Esxi for about four years and have it running at four sites. All sites are simple, nothing complicated setups and pale in comparrison to what most of y'all deal with.
With that said, yes, I've RT*M and everything I can find out there on setting up a simple cluster with Esxi 5.1 and I'm confused. All I want it two Windows servers that will function in a cluster so that if one dies (or whever the technical term is....if I understand correctly, a Failover Cluster vs a Load-Balanced Cluster) the other will take its place. I will have the servers on two different physical boxes. Remember, we are trying to do this as inexpensively as possible - small business.
Questions:
- Can I use the version of Esxi 5.1 I have "Essentials Kit". It shows that it does not have "HA" and I have yet to figure if I have to have "HA" to do this.
- Some things mention that you have to have shared storage and that you can't uses disk inside the main Esxi boxes. Am I right?
- I see a "Shared storage appliance" that costs 4k to 5k - ouch. Can a NAS or another physical box running iSCSI server as the shared storage? If so do you need two physical boxes in case one of them croaks?
Thanks for any help y'all can provide!
Arch