We have 4 server blades and each one of them has ESXi on it (3 x 6.5 and 1 x 6.0). There is a vCenter Appliance on one of the 6.5 that manages all 4 ESXi servers.
The problem is that, for now at least, we only have HDDs for 2 of them. The other have some default SSDs with 300GB each (way too small for our dev and test purposes).
Now, what I was thinking was to find a way so that the storage space (HDDs from first 2 servers) will be shared with all 4 ESXis. Meaning, to have a VM running on CPU/RAM on servers 3 or 4, but the disk to be located on a datastore from server 1 or 2.
I know that this is possible by using 3rd party software (found about 3PAR or StoreVirtual), and maybe vSAN, but due to project constraints this is not an option.
Is there any way to achieve this out-of-box? Any directions / hints / links / anything is highly appreciated.
Without the ability to use 3rd party software or vSAN, there's nothing else left available.
If cost is the issue, there are free options like openfiler or freenas that could help out. However, keep in mind that you'd need an openfiler/freenas instance on each of the systems with the hard drives... In the end you'd end up with 2 iSCSI or NFS mounts, one from each host.