How To Connect To iSCSI Storage From A Client System

Windows:

To access your new created iSCSI storage solution using Windows, the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator must be obtained and installed. It can be downloaded from Microsoft at the following location:

Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator

Once downloaded, install the software by double clicking the icon that is named similar to Initiator-2.06-build3497-x86fre.exe, this may be different depending on the version downloaded.

Once installed, double click the icon titled Microsoft iSCSI Initiator. This will open up a new window which is the setup and configuration window for your remote iSCSI target.

From this window, click on the Discovery tab. In relation to iSCSI, discovery is the step in which, by means of IP address, the initiator is able to reach across the network and attach to the remote disk(s).

Under target portals, click add. This will bring up a new windows which asks for the IP address or the DNS name and port of the remote disk(s) that you wish to attach to.

In my setup, I used 10.50.100.100 as the address of the remote target on port 3260 which is the default iSCSI port. Enter the IP address which was used during the setup of the iSCSI target along with the port which was set (typically 3260). Once this information is set, click ok. If a connection is made, no error message will be returned, otherwise an error message stating “Unable to make connection” will be displayed.

Now that a connection has been established, click on the Targets tab. Under targets, you should be able to see the name of your target, which was decided upon during the target setup. Click on this name and click the Log On button.

This will open a new window, in this window, you will be able to choose if the initiator connects to the remote disks automatically each time Windows is booted. It is recommended that this option is chosen so that if the power goes out, or should your system be rebooted without you being on hand to reconnect to the remote disk(s), any automated tasks will not loose the ability to access them.

Click the Bound Volumes/Devices tab. At the bottom of the Window, click Add.

From this window, click Bind All. This will attach all current iSCSI drives to the initiator. This step does not format the drives, and drives can be removed from this setup if only certain drives are to be used.

Once the drives are bound, click ok and exit the iSCSI initiator, right click on my computer and select manage. This will open a new window, in this window double clock Storage.

Then double click Disk Management(Local).

This will then open a new menu of all disks available to Windows. If the iSCSI disks have not been formated yet, they will appear as an unallocated drive. Right click on the unallocated drive and click New Partition. This will open up a guided wizard for partitioning the disk. Once the wizard is completed, the new disk will be accessible like a local disk.

Linux:

To use the iSCSI server with a Linux operating system, use the following steps. Note: All steps assume that the iSCSI Initiator that was installed earlier during this document is also installed on the machine you wish to use to connect to the server.The first steps in connecting to the iSCSI server under Linux is that it must be discovered. To discover a iSCSI server, use the following command.

iscsiadm –m discovery –t sendtargets –p <IP address of the iSCSI storage computer>:3260

Now that the target is discovered the iSCSI service must be restarted so that the target is setup. To do this type

service iscsi restart

Now that the target is setup, it can be access like a normal disk under fdisk and formated as needed. If the hard disk is already formated, it will remain formated as what is previously was formated as.

VMware ESX Server:

NOTE: Due to graphics quality issues, images were excluded from this section. To view these instructions with images, view the attached PDF documentation at the end of this article.

To use the iSCSI server with ESX Server 3i, use the following steps. Once logged into the Virtual Infrastructure Client, click on Configuration than Networking. From the networking screen, clock Add Networking and create a new VMkernel. Follow the steps in the wizard to setup the VMkernel.

Once the VMkernel is setup, click on Storage Adapters and look for iSCSI Software Adapter. Click on the adapter listed and in the lower window click on properties.

This will open a new tabbed window. Click on the Dynamic Discovery tab and then click add. A new window will open asking for the IP address and port of the iSCSI server. Once this information is entered, click ok, the IP address should now be listed in the Dynamic Discovery window. Click close to exit this window.

Right click on the iSCSI adapter and click rescan, this should discovery the available hard drives in the iSCSI server and list them.

Now that the iSCSI server has been attached to, the disks need to be configured for use by the ESX server. To do this, click on Storage, once in the storage window click Add Storage.

A new window will appear, in this window choose the Disk/Lun option.

Follow the wizard presented until you get to the Formatting step of the wizard. At this step, a few options are presented. These are the maximum sizes that any disk created in a virtual machine can be. For instance, if set to 256 GB as in the picture, a new disk created under a virtual machine running Windows can be no larger than 256 GB. Make sure to choose accordingly to your needs when at this step.

Finish the wizard and a new storage location will be accessible under ESX server which any virtual machine can be configured to use.