ESXI and Openfiler

[10051550]

Can a single box running Openfiler support connections from multiple simultaneous ESXi Hosts using ISCSI ?

Has anyone tried this ? any issues or anyone prefer NFS ?

[ScottBentley]

Hi

Openfiler can be configured and it will allow multiple ESX hosts to connect to it over iSCSI, I have done this several times in test environments without any issues.

Obviously it is not a supported configuration and I wouldn't reccomend it in a production environment

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[J1mbo]

NFS and iSCSI are both very similar. Personally I use Debian to provide NFS shares but OpenFiler is obviously a popular solution.

My notes on it: http://blog.peacon.co.uk/wiki/NFS

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

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[chaikeong]

I have tried it with Openfiler 2.3 64bit on a HP DL380 G5. I tried out both NFS and iSCSI and both works fine with about 10 ESX hosts, but have decided to continue with only NFS for ease of management.

chaikeong

http://ckcloud.blogspot.com/

[redbaron51]

This is how I run my homelab - 2x hosts with Openfiler. Works a treat.

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[AlbertWT]

can this Openfiler format the LUN as NTFS and then present it to the Windows Server ?

[ScottBentley]

Yes Openfiler will present an iSCSI LUN to a windows server, so this could then be formnatted as NTFS

I hope this helps

[AlbertWT]

thanks for the reply Scott, so how does one install Openfiler in Vmware ESXi if there is no VMXNet 3 or any vNIC supported ?

I tried this http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2009/06/openfiler-23-on-vsphere-using-vmxnet3.html but still no effect after numerous restart.

[ScottBentley]

If I use openfiler for a test environment I generally do it one of 2 ways

I have it installed as a VM in workstation on my laptop along with 2 esx servers simply to demonstrator and play with some of the functionality of vSphere in a easy and portable lab.

If I want to do anything more demanding with it I wouls install openfiler on some old hardware to create a iSCSI san just for test environments.

I have never actually installed openfiler as a VM on ESX

I hope this helps

[J1mbo]

Openfiler can be installed as a VM, see here.

Although if you just want a shared storage VM then you could equally use any Linux distro and NFS (for example, Debian or Ubuntu). Officially fedora-8 is the only free and supported NFS server.

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

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Unofficial List of USB Passthrough Working Devices

[AlbertWT]

Thanks for the reply Jimbo,

So those plain vanilla Linux VM can be set with NFS so that any windows server can just write into it ?

[J1mbo]

Yes indeed. Some distributions will need firewall rules added (iptables) but with Debian/Ubuntu it's literally a case of installing the OS (no need for any desktop interface, it's all command line anyway), add nfs and a few other bits with apt-get, format and mount a volume, define the exports, and voila 🙂




http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.

Unofficial List of USB Passthrough Working Devices

[ezzeldin72]

i did not try NFS but i know openfiler support iscsi or NFS

[AlbertWT]

Thanks guys for the responses.

Kind Regards,

AWT

[AlbertWT]

Finally, here's what I'vegot, it is configured on my ESXi as VM with the following Openfiler configuration:

R/W Mode: Write-thru

Transfer Mode: blockio

hopefully I'm on the correct path, it seems the performance was maxed out in 93 MB/s

Kind Regards,

AWT