How to set up a free iscsi or NAS storage system for VMware ESX using Openfiler

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 29 How to set up a free iscsi or NAS storage system for VMware ESX using Openfiler Everything I am about to demonstrate to you here is free. You won t have to spend a penny on software to build this architecture, the end result here is a centralised storage system that can be used for iscsi or NAS storage hosting to all your ESX clients to enable the use of VMotion, HA and DRS services. VMware ESXi is free and can be downloaded here. Openfiler NAS/iSCSI appliance is free and can be downloaded here Let us begin. First of all, we will build or iscsi or NAS device using Openfiler. You can download Openfiler from the link above, it is an easy installation (very similar to VMware ESX actually). Here are the required steps to get Openfiler up and running: OpenFiler Installation 1. Begin the Installation Insert the Openfiler disk into your CD/DVD-ROM drive and ensure your system is configured to boot from the CD/DVD-ROM drive. Hit the Enter key to proceed. 2. Boot Hit the enter key to begin the graphical installation

2 Page 2 of Installation You are now presented with a splash screen for installation. Hit Next

3 Page 3 of Keyboard Layout Select the appropriate keyboard layout. Hit Next

4 Page 4 of Disk Partitioning We are going to set this up manually. Select the Manual partition with Disk Druid. We will need to create three partitions on the system to complete the installation of openfiler: m sk led ion

5 Page 5 of 29 Click on the New button. You will be presented with a screen form with several fields and checkboxes. Enter the partition mount path /boot and the select the disk on which to create the partition (ensure this is the disk that you want to install Openfiler on, and not the disk you want to present to your esx servers) The following is a list of all entries required to create the boot partition: 1. Mount Point: /boot 2. Filesystem Type: ext3 3. Allowable Drives: As mentioned above, ensure the installation target disk is selected. 4. Size(MB): 100 (this is the size in Megabytes, allocate 100MB by entering 100 ) 5. Additional Size Options: select Fixed Size from the options. 6. Force to be a primary partition: Checked (select this checkbox to force the partition to be created as a primary partition) It should look like this:

6 Page 6 of 29 Create / (root) Partition previously when creating the boot partition. except this time the Mount Point: should be / and the Size(MB): should be 2048MB or at a minimum 1024MB.

7 Page 7 of 29 Create Swap Partition previously when creating the boot and root partitions. swap partition type. The Size(MB): of the partition should be at least 1024MB and need not exceed 2048MB.

8 Page 8 of 29 Proceed by clicking the OK button to create the partition. You should now have a set of partitions ready for the Openfiler Operating System image to install to. Your disk partition scheme should resemble the following, detailing what ever free space you have left.

9 Page 9 of Network Configuration In this section we will configure your network card (IP address etc), system hostname and DNS parameters. We will need to configure at least one network interface card in order to access the Openfiler web interface and to serve data to your ESX clients on a network. (at this stage, you can choose DHCP to configure the network address, you can simply click Next and proceed to the next stage of the installation process). To specificy an IP address and hostname, click the Edit button at the top right corner of the screen in the Network Devices section. Network interface devices are designated ethx where X is a number starting at 0. The first network interface device is therefore eth0. If you have more than one network interface device, they will all be listed in the Network Devices section. When you click the Edit button, a new form will popup for you to configure the network device in question. As you do not wish to use DHCP for this interface, uncheck the Configure Using DHCP checkbox. This will then allow you to enter a network IP address and Netmask in the appropriate form fields. Once completed, hit OK. Once you have configured an IP address, you may now enter a hostname for the system. The default hostname localhost.localdomain is not suitable and you will need to enter a more appropriate hostname for the system. For example, I am using openfiler.applicationdelivery.co.uk.

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11 Page 11 of 29 Once complete, hit Next 7. Time Zone Selection Set the default system time zone. You can achieve this by following the instructions on the left side of the screen. If your system BIOS has been configured to use UTC, check the UTC checkbox at the bottom of the screen and click Next to proceed.

12 Page 12 of Set Root Password You need to configure a root password for the system. Be creative and select a suitable password and enter it twice in the provided textboxes. When you are satisfied with your entries, click Next to proceed with the installation process. (I used password, nobody would guess that right?)

13 Page 13 of Kick off the Installation Hit Next, sit back and relax, in a few minutes you will have your very own, free, advanced storage solution.

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15 Page 15 of 29 Now that we have setup Openfiler, it is time to set up some disk space for ESX to utilise. 1. Logon to the Openfiler Web Interface console Launch a browser window (this works perfectly well on a mac with safari). Navigate to Logon as username = openfiler, password = password (these are the defaults and can be changed).

16 Page 16 of Start up the essential services By default Openfiler has the iscsi target and NAS services disabled, we must enable these to continue with our configuration. Click on the services tab and then start the iscsi target, NFSv3 and SMB/CIFS services.

17 Page 17 of Next we need to create a disk partition for presentation to our ESX servers Click on the Volumes tab, and then on the right click Block Devices.

18 Page 18 of 29 Next, highlight the the disk you originally installed Openfiler on (there should be some free disk space here).

19 Page 19 of 29 Scroll down the screen until you see the create a partition in /dev/diskname. I have 65GB of disk space left in my tiny scsi disk, so I am going to create a partition of 50GB by using the attributes listed below. Hit Create 5. Creating a Volume Group Now that we have our disk partition, we need to create a volume group and then add the disk partition from step 4. Click in the Volumes tab, give it the volume group name ESX and then select the disk partition from step 4. Choose add volume group.

20 Page 20 of Creating an iscsi Volume within the ESX Volume Group. Click on the Volumes tab and then select the Add volumes option on the right. Select the Volume Group we create in step 5 (ESX), scroll down the page and choose to create a new volume from within the ESX volume group. Select your desired space and ensure that the filesystem is set to iscsi. Hit Create.

21 Page 21 of Creating an iscsi target Now that we have set our disk up, we need to present it to our ESX Servers. Again, select the Volumes tab and on the right, choose iscsi Targets. You will be presented with a Target IQN, select Add. We now have an iscsi target created with default attributes, we now need to map the iscsi LUN we created from step 6. Select the Lun Mapping option, review the LUN created in step 6 and hit map.

22 Page 22 of 29 On the Network ACL tab, you will be highlighted to the fact that you havent set any up yet. Click on the link which will take you to the section where you can add your ESX servers to the ACL list. add the list of ESX hosts Next

23 Page 23 of 29 Then add the host to the LUN and ensure that they are set to allow

24 Page 24 of 29 That s it. We are now ready to move over to VMware s Virtual Infrastructure Client where we will add the iscsi volume and format it as VMFS ready for hosting virtual machines. Configuring an ESX server to use the Openfiler iscsi LUN I am going to assume that you have already installed ESX 3.x already and that you have a vmotion interface setup and the functionality is enabled within the license management components (otherwise this post is going to be waaay to long). So this is what you need to do to see this disk space and ultimately use it for virtual machine storage. 1. Configure the ESX firewall to allow iscsi software initiator out. Log into the VI client, and highlight the ESX server that you wish to configure, select the configuration tab. From within the software section on the left lower panel, select security profile, select properties. Ensure that the iscsi initiator is checked.

25 Page 25 of Enable the iscsi software initiator Again, from within the configuration tab, select storage adapters highlight the iscsi Software Adapter and the hit properties. On the general tab, click configure and enable the adapter.

26 Page 26 of 29 On the dynamic discovery tab, add the IP address of the Openfiler server (leave the port as default)

27 Page 27 of 29 Click close 3. Scan for the new iscsi LUN Again, from within the configuration tab, select storage adapters and then (just in the top right corner) select Rescan. Select options for both VMFS partitions and HBA s

28 Page 28 of 29 Once the scan has been completed you should now be able to see the new volume from within the storage section. 4. Formatting the iscsi volume with VMFS Still from within the configuration tab, highlight storage and then click add storage. Select Disk / Lun and hit Next. You should now see the iscsi we have created. Select to format the disk as a 1mb block size and that is it. If you repeat this step on all the ESX

29 Page 29 of 29 servers that you want to present to, you will have shared storage ready for services such as VMotion, HA and DRS. If you are stuck or need to know more information you can get me on linkedin.com Regards, Lee Wynne