building an openfiler storage in vmware vsphere 5.0 lab

How to configure OpenFiler iSCSI Storage for use with VMware vSphere 5.0

VEPSUN Technologies, #100 & 104, S R Arcade, Tulasi Theater Road, Marathahalli,

Bangalore. Email- [email protected] www.vepsun.in

Just to be clear, let me walk you through the steps to build Openfiler VM. Download the 64-bit ISO of Openfiler deploy as a VM.

My understanding is that Openfiler is built on Debian 5 so I chose Debian GNU/Linux 5 (64-bit) as the guest OS.

I gave the box a single vCPU and 1GB. I left the default SCSI controller and gave it one 10 GB virtual hard disk for the OS install. I

went back and added a second virtual hard disk of 100 GB to store the data. I tried a configuration with only one 100 GB virtual

hard disk, installing the OS on one partition and using the rest for storage, but I could not get Openfiler to use the remaining space

for storage. So I just added a second hard disk. Finish the rest of the VM build with all default values.




Before powering on the VM for the first time, right-click the VM and go to Edit Settings5 Add a second hard drive of 100 GB using

default values for everything else.

Installing Openfiler 2.99

Turn on the Openfiler VM and load the ISO. Reboot into the ISO and Openfiler. Press enter or just wait a few seconds for it to

continue from the first page.




Press “Next” to start the installation. Press “Next” after choosing your language. You may get a warning because the installer

recognizes an uninitialized hard drive. Realize you’ll be losing data if it’s present on the hard drive and press “Yes” to continue. On

the partition page, both hard drives you added are checked by default as installation drives. You’ll want to uncheck the 100 GB

hard drive labeled sdb. We’ll configure this later. You may want to check the box next to “Review and modify portioning layout.”

Click “Next.”

You’ll get another warning about losing any data present on your hard drives. This is, of course, ok since we know they’re new

drives. Click “Yes” to continue. If you checked the box to review the partitioning layout, you can see the dives you added, labeled

/dev/sda for the 10 GB hard drive where you’ll install Openfiler and, scrolling down, you’ll see 100 GB of free space where your

data will go. Click “Next” to continue.




Your data drive is labeled as /dev/sdb and you can see there’s 100 GB free.




Choosing the default EXTLINUX boot loader work fine. Go ahead and click “Next.” On the networking page, go ahead and check

the box next to each network interface, eth0 and eth1. Highlight each of them in turn and click “Edit” to configure your IP settings.

So I’ll configure it to have an IP address in that subnet. I disabled IPv6 support because I know I’m not using it. You can leave it

enabled if you want. It won’t hurt anything.

Add in default gateway and DNS information here. Click “Next” when finished.




Feel free to configure a time zone and “Next” when done. And finally, enter a root password. Press “Next” when done. If you’re

happy with your choices so far, click “Next” to actually install Openfiler. You’ll see Openfiler formatting your configured partitions

as requested. Your 100 GB data partition will be formatted by ESXi for VMFS3 later on when you add storage to your hosts. Once

the installation is finished, click “Reboot” and we’ll start configuring Openfiler.

Configuring a Single LUN with Multiple iSCSI Targets

The boot loader screen below is what you’ll see each time Openfiler boots. Either press enter to continue or wait the allotted time

and Openfiler will start automatically.




Once you see the screen below, you can close the console to the Openfiler VM. You’ll mainly work from Openfiler’s web interface,

not the command line below. Take note of the web administration address give below. It’s HTTPS and you have to specify port




446. The IP address of the web interface is the IP address of the network interface, eth0.

From a computer connected to your front-end network, type in the address to the Openfiler web interface. In this case, I typed in

https://10.240.1.105:446. Your web browser may holler about an untrusted certificate. Just ignore it and continue on. Once at the

Openfiler web login screen, enter the default username and password of “openfiler” and “password” without the quotes.




Once logged in, let’s start configuring! On the top menu, go to “System.”

Scroll down and enter your ESXi host information into the Network Access Configuration. The purpose of this blog post is to show

you how to configure shared storage using Openfiler so you should have at least two ESXi hosts. In my test lab, I have three, so I

have three items to configure on this page. You can put anything you like in the “Name” column, but I put something descriptive

that lets me know for what device I’m configuring access. Be careful here. As I mentioned at the beginning of my post in the

mistakes I made section, for shared storage, you’ll want to specify an exact host for which you’ll want to allow access. This means

specifying the IP addresses of the network adapters on each ESXi host you’ll be using for iSCSI traffic under the “Network/Host”

column. For each ESXi host, under the “Netmask” column, be sure to use 255.255.255.255. You can only add or delete one item

at a time, pressing update after each change.




When you have your ESXi hosts configured, click “Volumes” on the top menu, then “Block Devices” on the menu on the right, then

click on your second hard drive, /dev/sdb.

Scroll down to create a partition. The only change you need to make is to make the “Partition Type” Physical Volume instead of

the default Extended Partition. Click “Create” after making this change.

After creating your partition, you can see it created above. Click “Add Volume.”




Scroll down and fill in the information for creating a volume. Give it any Volume Name you like. I chose the very original “filer1″

with a Volume Description of “data.” Be sure to move the Required Space slider all the way to the right and fill up your entire

partition. If you leave the default setting of 32 MB (which is ridiculously small), you’ll run into problems later. Also, be sure to

change the Filesystem/Volume Type to block(iSCSI,FC,etc). Click “Create” when finished.

Click “Volume Groups” in the right hand menu and fill in the required information. A volume group name of volume1 should be

fine. Check the box next to your /dev/sdb1 and click “Add Volume Group.”




In the overhead menu, click on “Services.” Notice that the iSCSI Targer service is set to “Stopped” by default. You won’t be able to

add iSCSI Targets without starting this service. Go ahead and click on “Start” to start the service.

You’ll see that the iSCSI Target service is now running.




Click on “Volumes” in the top menu then click on iSCSI Targets in the right hand menu. This should bring you to the screen below

where you can start adding iSCSI targets. Under the heading, “Add new iSCSI Target,” click the “Add” button as many times as

you have ESXi hosts. In my case, I have three ESXi hosts, so I clicked “Add” three times to create three iSCSI targets. If you have

two ESXi hosts, you’ll create two iSCSI targets. Each ESXi host will connect to a single iSCSI target. We’ll make sure that each

iSCSI target you create gets mapped to the same LUN.

Once you have your iSCSI targets created, you’ll need to configure each one. You can see all your created iSCSI targets if you

expand the drop down box. I created three targets so I see three targets. Each target will make use of the circled menus: Target

Configuration, LUN Mapping, and Network ACL. For consistency, choose the top-most iSCSI target from the drop down list. In this




case, I’ll choose the target whose last two digits are “9b.” Click the “Change” button next to the target to switch to that target’s

settings. Click the LUN Mapping item.

The LUN Mapping screen is where you map iSCSI Targets to iSCSI LUNs. We’ve created a single LUN, so the only option we

have is to map our first iSCSI target to our only iSCSI LUN. Click the “Map” button on this screen.

Next, click the “Network ACL” menu. Notice the iSCSI target name, the long string starting with “iqn.” IQN stands for iSCSI

Qualified Name. It’s just a unique way of addressing an iSCSI device, similar in purpose to a MAC address. You’ll also see each

item you listed under the Network Access Configuration page. By default, each ESXi host listed is denied access to all iSCSI

targets. You’ll have to explicitly tell Openfiler which ESXi host you’ll want to have access to which iSCSI target. For simplicity, we’ll




configure the first ESXi host to connect to the first iSCSI target, the second ESXi host to connect to the second iSCSI target, and

third ESXi host to connect to the third iSCSI target.

The Network ACL screen is where you’ll actually mask ESXi hosts from iSCSI targets. Since we’re working on the first iSCSI

target, we’ll configure the first ESXi host, esx01, to “Allow” in the Access column. We’ll leave the other hosts set to deny. When we

click the “Update” button, we’ve now masked the first iSCSI target so that only the first ESXi host can see it. The other two hosts

cannot.

Follow this process for the other two iSCSI targets. Click on “Target Configuration” from the top menu. Use the drop down list to

highlight the second iSCSI target. Click “Change.” Click on “LUN Mapping” from the top menu. Simply click, “Map,” and click on

“Network ACL” from the top menu. For the second host, esx02 in this case, choose “Allow” from the drop down menu in the

Access column. Leave the other two ESXi hosts set to deny.

Finally, configure the last iSCSI target. Click on “Target Configuration” from the top menu. Use the drop down list to highlight the

third iSCSI target. Click “Change.” Click on “LUN Mapping” from the top menu. Click, “Map,” and click on “Network ACL” from the

top menu. For the third host, esx03, choose “Allow” from the drop down menu in the Access column. Leave the other two ESXi

hosts set to deny.

Although you’re done for the moment, don’t close your web browser. You’ll need to access the IQNs of the iSCSI targets you

created. You are done configuring Openfiler for shared storage. The final step is to configure each ESXi host in your environment

to “see” their respective iSCSI targets and thus the shared storage to which each iSCSI target is mapped.

Configuring ESXi 5.0 Software iSCSI Storage Adapters

Using your vSphere client, connect to your vCenter Server. In the screenshot below, I’m viewing the first ESXi host, esx01, and

I’m on the Configuration tab viewing the Storage Adapters. You can see I’ve highlighted the built-in VMware iSCSI Software

Adapter. By highlighting the iSCSI adapter, I can now modify its properties. In the box below the adapters list, click on

“Properties.”




Clicking “Properties” brings up the iSCSI Initiator Properites dialogue box. If you aren’t already using the iSCSI software initiator,

you’ll first have to enable it. Do this by clicking, “Configure.” In the General Properties dialogue box that appears, check the box

next to “Enabled,” and click “OK” to close the General Properties dialogue box.

Since you still have your web browser open to Openfiler, go back to Volumes, iSCSI Targets. Choose the first iSCSI target from

the drop down list and click change. Click on Network ACL from the top menu. You’ll see the IQN of the iSCSI target at the top of

the page. You need to copy this IQN, everything in between the quotes, into the iSCSI Initiator Properties of your first ESXi host.

You can either write down the IQN number and type it into the iSCSI Initiator Properties, or you can simply copy and paste.

Obviously, you’ll reduce the chances of mis-typing if you copy and paste.




Back in the vSphere client and the iSCSI Initiator Properties dialogue box, click on the Static Discovery tab and click the “Add”

button at the bottom. The Add Static Target Server dialogue box appears. Enter the IP address of the Openfiler box. Remember,

Openfiler has two network cards; one for the management network and one for iSCSI traffic. In this exercise, the IP address of my

Openfiler management NIC is 10.240.1.205 and the IP address of my Openfiler iSCSI NIC is 172.16.1.205. Enter Openfiler’s

iSCSI NIC address in the iSCSI Server edit box and the IQN of the first iSCSI target. The port number should be left at its default

3260 value.

Click “OK” when finished and after a few seconds, your configuration should appear in the Static Discovery tab under “Discovered

or manually entered iSCSI targets:.” Finally, click “Close” at the bottom of this screen.




A message box will appear. Read it and click “Yes.”

If everything’s working as it should, after a few seconds you should see Openfiler populate as a device. In the picture below, I

already had one Openfiler iSCSI VM running and connected, but this exercise is adding a second Openfiler iSCSI VM.




You can also manually rescan by right-clicking the iSCSI Software Adapter and choosing “Rescan” or by clicking “Rescan All5” in

the upper right hand corner. The “Rescan All5” option takes a bit longer than right clicking the iSCSI adapter because it rescans

not one, but all of your adapters for new devices.

building an openfiler storage in vmware vsphere 5.0 lab

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iso of openfiler

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