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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

ISCSI IQNs and VMWare ESXi

Hello,

What is best practice for iSCSI when connecting multiple FreeNASs to ESX servers? I have 2 FreeNASs connected to 3 ESX hosts that are working just fine, both FreeNASs are using the default IQN "iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl"

I just attempted to add a 3rd FreeNAS to ESX and 1 of the 3 hosts saw the datastore. All 3 hosts saw the new array under "devices" but I could not see the datastore. I googled and searched for a hour or so and finally came to the conclusion I had a IQN collision I believe. I gave the new 3rd FreeNAS a unique IQN, ""iqn.2005-10.org.freenas2.ctl" and BAM! Datastores on all 3 hosts.

I come from a FC world, so any iSCSI tips are appreciated.

What is best practices for what I am doing? Should I make the global IQN unique on each FreeNas?

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

IQN's should be unique. Please take a look at e.g. RFC 3720 - Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) which explains the IQN naming. Adding a colon (:) followed by a unique string would be the proper way. You can actually see such extensions in the ESXi host's IQNs.

André

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