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pat_act_au
Contributor
Contributor

ISCSI Between 2 ESXI hosts

I am attempting to lab test a change in our production environment which has access to a NAS with iSCSI storage. However my lab does not has access to a physical NAS.

So I have configured a freenas vm (10.0.0.34) on one of lab ESXI's, LABVS002 (10.0.0.23) and I am trying to present this iSCSI target to my other lab ESXI LABVS001 (10.0.0.21).

I am unable to connect from LABVS001 to freenas on port 3260, however I can vmkping from LABSV001 to freenas:

[pmg@LABVS001:~] nc -z 10.0.0.34 3260

[pmg@LABVS001:~]

[pmg@LABVS001:~] vmkping 10.0.0.34

PING 10.0.0.34 (10.0.0.34): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 10.0.0.34: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.445 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.0.34: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.477 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.0.34: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.497 ms

--- 10.0.0.34 ping statistics ---

3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max = 0.445/0.473/0.497 ms

I have confirmed that netcat can confirm port 80 communication between LABSV001 and freenas:

[pmg@LABVS001:~] nc -z 10.0.0.34 80

Connection to 10.0.0.34 80 port [tcp/http] succeeded!

[pmg@LABVS001:~]

I thought that this may be something to do with the ESXI firewall so I have disabled both the firewalls:

[pmg@LABVS001:~] esxcli network firewall get

   Default Action: PASS

   Enabled: false

   Loaded: false

[pmg@LABVS002:~]  esxcli network firewall get

   Default Action: PASS

   Enabled: false

   Loaded: false

Any ideas?

Pat

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Since you have installed the iSCSI target as a VM, it's not the host to which you need to connect, but the VM (FreeNAS).

Your FreeNAS VM should be connected to a Virtual Machine port group on the host on which it is installed, and the other host needs a VMKernel port group (assuming you are using Software iSCSI) in the iSCSI target's IP range/subnet.

André

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pat_act_au
Contributor
Contributor

Andre,

Thanks for the post. I am actually doing that. I have just posted a diagram of my configuration which may explain the setup better.

I attempting to mount the iSCSI target on 10.0.0.34 (freenas on ESXI 10.0.0.23 LABSV002) to 10.0.0.21 (ESXI LABSV001). I think the diagram will make it clearer.

Thanks,

Pat

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Nick_Andreev
Expert
Expert

I assume you have masked the LUN from FreeNAS to your ESXi host's iSCSI initiator?

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