--- title: 'Clusters with shared disk using VMware Server' url: 'https://mo.homelinux.net/home/vmware-shared-disk' markdown: 'https://mo.homelinux.net/home/vmware-shared-disk.md' date: '2008-02-17' description: 'If you want to try out some cluster configurations, VMWare server has a nice feature where you can share a vmdk between more than one VM, and since it support SCSI persistent reservations, you can truly simulate a real cluster. I have used this to deploy Redhat Cluster server as a test environment. Based' taxonomy: category: - blog tag: - vmware - cluster archives_month: - feb_2008 archives_year: - '2008' --- # Clusters with shared disk using VMware Server [ Home ](https://mo.homelinux.net/) Clusters with shared disk using VMware Server ## [Clusters with shared disk using VMware Server](https://mo.homelinux.net/home/vmware-shared-disk) 17th Feb 2008 [vmware](https://mo.homelinux.net/tag:vmware#body-wrapper) [cluster](https://mo.homelinux.net/tag:cluster#body-wrapper) If you want to try out some cluster configurations, VMWare server has a nice feature where you can share a vmdk between more than one VM, and since it support SCSI persistent reservations, you can truly simulate a real cluster. I have used this to deploy Redhat Cluster server as a test environment. Based on the documentation on the VMWare website, sharing a disk between multiple nodes can be achieved by creating a virtual disk, and then importing that disk into each virtual machine. Once the disk is imported, you can add or modify the `scsiX.sharedBus = "virtual"` (X should match the controller that is used to host the shared disk) and `disk.locking = "false"` directives to the shared disk stanzas in each virtual machines vmx file. Here is a sample: ``` scsi1.present = "TRUE" scsi1.sharedBus = "virtual" scsi1.virtualDev = "lsilogic" scsi1:0.present = "TRUE" scsi1:0.fileName = "shared_disk.vmdk" disk.locking = "false" ``` This has served me well for testing and evaluation purposes for quite some time, though I provide ZERO guarantees that it will work in yours (and there is always the possibility that sharing disk between multiple nodes will corrupt data). I am documenting this here as a reference for myself, though feel free to use this information at your own risk. 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