Free iSCSI Solution

In my quest to build out a flexible VMWare VI3 environment at my home lab I originally implemented fiber channel storage (via a pair of Brocades and an HP MSA1000 hacked for Active-Active). I have since sold the FC kit and turned to free iSCSI solutions, which should suffice for my level of IO requirements. Since there are a number of free solutions out there, I decided to test out a few. After grimacing through the openfiler setup (perhaps there are just too many objects in my AD as it kept timing out during the AD lookup) I stumbled upon the iSCSI Enterprise Target Project. After reading through the Wiki I thought I’d give the install a go, but a quick Google turned up an already existing Virtual Appliance, simply called iscsi-target.

Simply download the appliance and fire it up if you’re running one of the lighter versions of VMware (Player, Workstation, et al.). If you’re using VMware VI3, use the free VMWare Converter Tool to import the Virtual Machine into your VI3 environment.

You may want to disconnect the network switch until you configure the local NIC.

Configure the NIC settings in:

• /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

...as it has a static IP assigned.

The virtual appliance comes with an 8GB volume formatted in NTFS and presented as LUN0. For now, let’s make sure that it’s configured properly.
If you have an XP/2003 Microsoft box handy, simply install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator.

Open up the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator program and do the following:

• —> Discovery Tab —> Target Portals —> Add —> Enter IP of your virtual appliance.
• —> Targets Tab —> Log On —> Click both boxes (Automatically restore… & Enable multi-path).

• —> Bound Volumes/Devices —> Bind All

Now if you open up Explorer you should see a drive like, ISCSI (E:\)

You’ve now proven that the appliance is working properly. Now let’s create a volume for VMFS-3 storage for your very own virtual machines.

From the console of the appliance:

• shutdown now
• Once the machine has run through the shutdown process, power it off.
• Follow the usual process for adding another hard drive to the appliance. I create a new disk of 50GB in size.

• Once the process completes, power up the appliance.

Now edit the configuration file:
• nano -w /etc/ietd.conf

Add the following to the bottom:
• Target iqn.2006-01.vmware.iscsi:storage.sdc

• Lun 1 Path=/dev/sdc,Type=fileio

Note that “sdc” is the new drive you just added. If you add another drive after this step, it would be “sdd.”
Also note that Lun # Path…, where # is the LUN ID of the new LUN. I used 1, but you could use anything. Note, if you want a “boot-from-san” server to use your iSCSI storage, this LUN ID will need to be 0. You can have multiple LUN 0s presented from the appliance, but only one LUN 0 presented to each client.

• Save your new addition to the configuration file.
Reset the iSCSI-target service:
• /etc/init.d/iscsi-target restart

Your new volume is now ready for use. If you want to use the new storage for VMFS-3 virtual machine storage, follow on to the next article, Using the Free iSCSI Solution for VMFS-3 Storage.

- Jason Langone

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