5.4.8 testout lab configure the iscsi initiator
- 5.4.8 TESTOUT LAB CONFIGURE THE ISCSI INITIATOR INSTALL
- 5.4.8 TESTOUT LAB CONFIGURE THE ISCSI INITIATOR MAC
Now with this setup you can have a killer NAS and safe, high performance VM storage on a budget. Path Selection Policy Device Custom Config: The information you want is the naa.id I’ve highlighted in red below. Here you can type in this to get the ID of the iSCSI share. If you’re on Windows, grab PuTTY and SSH in to the ESXi box. Above the list of Services you’ll see the option to Start it. To enable SSH go to Manage > Services and click on TSM-SSH. You should be able to use the datastore now however there is some more steps to use a round robin configuration for optimal performance.įor the next steps we will enable SSH and set iSCSI to use round robin. Select the iSCSI share from FreeNAS and Name it.Once you’re out of that, click on the Datastores tab and go New datastore. Click Save Configuration and when you go back in it should look like this (The part in blue will auto fill once you save and click on Configure iSCSI again). Also, add all your FreeNAS iSCSI IPs to Dynamic targets. Under Network port bindings add all of your connections. Go to Storage > Adapters > Configure iSCSI and check the enable box. Now that the network settings are out of the way we can configure iSCSI itself. Also, you can try pinging from FreeNAS Shell to test connections. You can look on the Interfaces page in FreeNAS and Physical NICs page in ESXi to see what links are up/down. Plugging in the Ethernet cables can be tricky if you don’t know what physical interfaces have what IP. Fill in the name, select the switch, put the MTU to 9000 and give a static IP. In the top tab, go to VMkernel NICs and click Add VMkernel NIC. Make a Virtual Switch for each network connection you’ll have. You’ll want to set the MTU to 9000 as we did in FreeNAS. Once you know what ports to add, go to the Virtual Switches tab and click Add standard virtual switch.
5.4.8 TESTOUT LAB CONFIGURE THE ISCSI INITIATOR MAC
MAC Addresses on the same card will generally only have the last hex value incremented by 1.
You can easily tell that vmnic0 is the odd one out and there for not part of my quad-gigabit card in this picture. Take note of the vmnic numbers on the adapter you’re going to use. Open up your WebGUI for ESXi 6.5 and navigate to Networking > Physical NICs. You should now have FreeNAS ready, we can move on to ESXi. The final step is to enable the iSCSI service by going to Services and clicking Start Now for iSCSI. Go to Associated Targets > Add Target / Extent and add the target and extent you’ve created. In my case I’ve created a zvol to use as a device extent. Under Extents > Add Extent you’ll need to pick either a device (zvol) you’ve created or create a file to share. Pick a name and select your portal group and initiator group. Go to Initiators > Add Initiator and click OK, that is all here. You’ll want to click Add extra Portal IP at the bottom and add all your interfaces. Now we can setup iSCSI itself, go to Sharing > Block (iSCSI) > Portals > Add Portal. Having an MTU of 9000 will help with performance.ĭo this for all interfaces you’re planning on using for iSCSI. Name the interface the same name as the NIC : option, type in the IP, select the netmask and finally, type in mtu 9000 in the options. On the FreeNAS WebGUI go Network > Interfaces > Add Interface. We’ll run the network with a /24 subnet like this: FreeNAS Cable ESXi IXsystems have their own FreeNAS systems you can buy here.įor for link between the two systems we will want to have 1 subnet per connection for iSCSI to work correctly. If you’re still in the planning phase of your FreeNAS system, you can browse NAS Hard Drives on amazon here.
5.4.8 TESTOUT LAB CONFIGURE THE ISCSI INITIATOR INSTALL
I’ll presume you’ve got a fresh FreeNAS and ESXi install on both systems and quad or dual gigabit links between them. In this article I’ll guide you through the setup process I’ve used to get iSCSI working between FreeNAS and ESXi. This setup works quite well for home lab use and provides a safe enough place to store my VMs. They’re connected using a multipath iSCSI link on cheap quad-gigabit cards I brought used. In my home lab setup I’ve currently got 1 FreeNAS box and 1 VMware ESXi box.
Also, I have a guide for FreeNAS, XCP-ng and iSCSI here. With FreeNAS’s new interface, this is out of date.