Step 1 – VMware ESX iSCSI Configuration:

Open up the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client (VIC) and select the ESX server that you want to add the iSCSI storage to. From the ‘Configurations’ tab in the right pane select ‘Networking’. You will now be presented with the networking configuration for that ESX server.

Step 1 – iSCSI Configuration

As you can see my particular install of ESX is using ESXi.

I have created a second Virtual Switch and have allocated a VMKernel port on the second NIC port (which is patched into the 10.10.0.0/24 VLAN) which I have given a 10.10.0.98/24 IP address. The is the port that the iSCSI traffic will use.

If you are configuring this using ESXi 3.5 then you will also have to add a ‘Service Console’ port to this newly created Virtual Switch. If you don’t do this you’ll get this friendly reminder. ESXi 4.0 you might not get this message.

We now want to look at the ‘Storage Adapters’. Click on this option in the ‘Hardware’ menu.

Step 1a – Storage Adapters

You will see that there is an iSCSI Software Adapter already in place – though currently not enabled. All that needs doing is to configure and point it to the OpenFiler LUN(s). Notice how all the iSCSI related details are currently blank.

Click on the ‘iSCSI Software Adapter’ and select ‘Properties’.

Step 1b – Initiator Properties

The status of the iSCSI Software Adapter is initially set to ‘Disabled’. We want to enable it and assign the relevant details. Click on ‘Configure’. Check the ‘Enable’ status box and click ‘Ok’

Step 1c – General Properties

The iSCSI properties will now be populated (see below). I won’t go into the format of the iSCSI name and alias though the VMware Infrastructure 3: Advanced Technical Design Guide and Advanced Operations Guide has a good section on iSCSI and explains these details. This book is available on Amazon.com

Step 1d – Initiator Properties

Clicking on the ‘Dynamic Discovery’ tab and selecting ‘Add’ we are presented with an ‘Add Send Targets Server’ dialogue box. This is where we’ll enter the IP address of our Openfiler server/SAN. (Note: the ‘Static Discovery’ tab is only used when using a hardware iSCSI initiator)

Step 1e – Target Server

After entering in this IP information and pressing ‘Ok’ it can take a little while before iSCSI server is detected.

Step 1f – Initiator Properties – Server Address

With these new iSCSI setting we are prompted to re-scan the host. Select ‘Yes’

Step 1g – Rescan Adapters

After ESX has finished its re-scan you should now see the LUN(s) appear that you created in OpenFiler.

Step 1h – iSCSI Adapters

With this shared storage and a couple of ESX servers you can now start using some of the more interesting and powerful features of VMware ESXi such as VMotion and HA (assuming you have the appropriate license).

As mentioned this is purely intended as a rough guide to getting Openfiler up and running with VMware ESX. Openfiler has plenty of other great features and is worth investing some time into.

Hope this guide helps. Good Luck!