ISCSI SAN Suggestion? (Dev/Test)

[MichaelJ1]

Hi Everyone,

I'm wondering if someone has experience with a do-it-yourself ISCSI SAN solution for an ESXi 4.1 server (free version) and/or an ESX 4.0 cluster of two ESX hosts. I have been doing some quick research and I really like the flexibility of Solaris Express 11. It doesn't seem to tricky to configure but I've also come across OpenFiler which may be a bit easier.

Does anyone have some experience setting up an OpenFiler or Solaris Express 11 ISCSI SAN? Or perhaps another distribution of Linux? I plan on using an LSI RAID controller with 4 SATA disks in a RAID10 config for the data (it's not for production use - more for proof-of-concept and development).

Any suggestions would be great.

Cheers,

Mike

[runclear]

I use OpenFiler 2.99 (SCST targets) and its been solid in my sandbox environment...

id also reccomend giving Nexentra a whirl... (Solaris, ZFS ....) I believe their CE edition allows for 18TB with no licensing.

http://www.nexentastor.org/projects/site/wiki/CommunityEdition

[MichaelJ1]

Great, thanks for the suggestions.

On your OpenFiler setup, was it relatively easy to configure the ISCSI target? (I think called the ISCSI initiator?) Do you know if I'd be able to configure multiple volumes (one for the Vcenter cluster and one for the free version)?

Mike

[runclear]

I personally found it very easy to setup...

I say just download the bits and roll youself up a sandbox iSCSI box ...   But yes - depending on how you build out your iSCSI box, you can present storage to multiple hosts from a single target...