iSCSI / SUN 7110 Virtual Simulator problem

[ArchersIT]

Hi folks,

I have been busy playing with Sun 7110 Virtual Simulator and have hit what is probably a complete newbie problem.

I have Cifs working fine so I decided to try connecting to it via iSCSI. Please note that as this was just a play, I was using the normal TCP/IP infrastructure which meant that the two devices were not on the same switch.

I have setup the 7110 to take iSCSI on a project and I have setup an initiator. My Initiator was planned to be one of our test Windows Server 2008 servers so I setup iSCSI initiator. This gave me the IQN for the initiator.

The problems come with the next steps. I set up the IP address of the 7110 as a Target Portal - I presume this is ok as if I put in the wrong IP address it tells me there is a connection problem. However, if I try to refresh the Target, it gets nothing.

I am not sure what to do next and how to debug - could anyone give me some starting pointers? I am not using CHAP names or secrets anywhere.

Many thanks for any help anyone can point at.

Cheers

Jonathan

[Duke]

Hi Jonathan,

I've just gone through this on our 7410 and an XP Pro box, hope it helps:

• Sun Box
• Login
• Shares
• LUNs
• Click the + to add a LUN
• Use the default project, unless you’ve configured another project with specific settings
• Give it a name
• Volume size – as much as you need for testing
• Leave sparse un-ticked unless you know you need it
• 8k block size is fine
• Apply
• Mouseover the new LUN and hit the pencil (edit) icon on the right
• Click protocols
• Unless you’ve set up a project for something specific, untick ‘Inherit from project’
• Click the + next to Initiator Access Control
• Enter an Initiator Alias (name of the Windows server would make sense)
• Enter the IQN from the Windows server (found via the iSCSI Initiator)
• Back on the main protocols screen, untick 'Allow any Initiator Access' and tick 'Allow' for your Windows server entry
• Hit Apply

• Windows Server
• Run the iSCSI Initiator
• Discovery > Add
• Enter the FQDN of the Sun box, leave the port as it is
• Targets > Refresh
• You should see the LUN you just made on the Sun box
• Select it and hit Log On
• Go to Computer Management
• Storage > Disk Management
• The Disk Wizard should pop up automatically, or if not you'll just see a new unallocated drive you need to partition and format
• Do with it as you wish!

EDIT - To use the FQDN, make sure you've got a DNS entry for your SUN box.

Not sure why you wouldn't be able to see the target LUN if you've done the above. If there is a firewall on the Windows server try disabling it.

Cheers,
Chris

[ArchersIT]

Hi Jonathan,

I've just gone through this on our 7410 and an XP Pro box, hope it helps:

• Sun Box
• Login
• Shares
• LUNs
• Click the + to add a LUN
• Use the default project, unless you’ve configured another project with specific settings
• Give it a name
• Volume size – as much as you need for testing
• Leave sparse un-ticked unless you know you need it
• 8k block size is fine
• Apply
• Mouseover the new LUN and hit the pencil (edit) icon on the right
• Click protocols
• Unless you’ve set up a project for something specific, untick ‘Inherit from project’
• Click the + next to Initiator Access Control
• Enter an Initiator Alias (name of the Windows server would make sense)
• Enter the IQN from the Windows server (found via the iSCSI Initiator)
• Back on the main protocols screen, untick 'Allow any Initiator Access' and tick 'Allow' for your Windows server entry
• Hit Apply

Okay - on the 7110 simulator the settings are slightly different, and when I look at the protocols for the new filesystem (lun) it does not list iSCSI, this is only listed at the project level - I wonder if I am doing something wrong here - I will have a read of the helpfile.

Cheers

Jonathan

[teejay]

I think what you may have done is created a filesystem rather than a LUN. Click on LUNs first and then click on the + symbol.

[ArchersIT]

I think what you may have done is created a filesystem rather than a LUN. Click on LUNs first and then click on the + symbol.

Spot on - many thanks. I knew it must have been something obvious like this because everything else has been really easy!

Cheers

Jonathan

[teejay]

No probs, there are a few areas like that in the interface, scheduled snapshots is another one. Overall an easy interface to navigate, but as with anything there are a few unique ways of doing things!

[Butuz]

Has anyone got this working on ESXi then? or do you have to use Server/Player.

I just tried to get on ESCi and it is not working properly - keeps saying the attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (powered off).

Butuz

[ArchersIT]

Has anyone got this working on ESXi then? or do you have to use Server/Player.

I just tried to get on ESCi and it is not working properly - keeps saying the attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (powered off).

Butuz

I have been using player as none of my current hardware is supported on ESXi

Jonathan

[Duke]

Has anyone got this working on ESXi then? or do you have to use Server/Player.

I tried a while back with an older version and didn't have any luck. Something about the way it was configured and the virtual machine image format it uses. I found a tool to convert between VM disk file formats but it never successfully converted them to something I could use in ESXi.

Cheers,
Chris

[PRicho]

Been trying to the same this all morning! didn't even know that was button

[Duke]

The LUN bit? It threw me when I first saw it as well. Once you realise then it's all fine, but it is one of the few areas of the Fishworks GUI that's not particularly clear.

[cookie_monster]

I'm in the process of creating a couple of LUNs to present to my Xen boxes, do I need an Initiator Alias for each LUN?

I'm in the play stage at the moment but i'm aiming to create one iSCSI LUN for each physical Xen box that they can then store VMs on. Am I barking up the right tree here?

[Duke]

If I'm following you right then you should might want to make a pool of your Xen boxes then all you need to do is create one LUN on the S7000 and add it to the pool. All the Xen hosts can then see it as 'shared' storage and boot VMs from it. You'll need to know the initiators of all the Xen hosts if you're using initiator security so you can add and allow them on the S7000.

Cheers,
Chris

[cookie_monster]

Oh ok I was trying to make a LUN for each physical box. I've now added them to the same pool so they should both be able to access it right. I remember reading that devices couldn't share iSCSI LUNs but the Xen pool must sort that then right?

[Duke]

Someone please confirm this or correct me if I'm wrong, but generally an iSCSI LUN can only be accessed by one device unless it has a filesystem that's designed to handle multiple access. So while NTFS wouldn't work, the Xen and VMware filesystems (I suppose they're not technically filesystems in the typical sense, but you know what I mean) are designed to handle multiple hosts accessing files on the same LUN. Can someone just confirm that makes sense?

Assuming you're using initiator security groups then your SAN will need to be told to allow all your Xen hosts iSCSI initiators to be able to access that LUN. After that (going by memory here as I've been playing with ESX more than Xen recently) you just add the LUN to the Xen pool, set it as the default storage, then put your virtual machines it in. If you have failover enabled then the pool will detect when one host goes down and automatically boot the VMs from the SAN on a different host.

Chris