I have two application servers running in a active/active cluster within a VMWare ESXi (5.5, upgrade to 6.5 in near future) virtual host running VSphere. The application needs a shared, high performance storage.
ESXi utilizes an EMC storage using LUNs.
Is there a way to create an additional storage (disk device) that is mapped via VSphere to both VMs?
I personally would go with GlusterFS which introduces additional VMs, but my infrastructure administrators tend to reject it (VM limits reached). So the GlusterFS approach would not be possible for me.
The general scheme is to create a new vmdk using 1:0 as SCSI ID to create a separate virtual controller. This controller can then be set to shared virtual (sharing on a single host) or shared physical (shared across hosts).
On the other VM you add the existing disk using a separate controller as well and you're set.
Obviously, the accessing VMs need to coordinate access to the disk between them. Using a normal filesystem without clustering option will not work.
Check out https://communities.vmware.com/blogs/Abhilash_hb/2013/08/25/clustering-using-sharing-of-vmdks-between-virtual-machines for details.