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zeebahi
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Software ISCSI adapter on ESXi

Hi everyone,

Trying to learn ISCSI on ESXI.

My lab set up:

ESxi-2  vmk0--172.20.10.52-vSW-VMNIC0----------- 172.20.10.10  STORAGE ISCSI TARGET-LUNS

             vmk1--172.20.11.52-VSW-VMNIC1----------- 172.20.11.10

Above single window box is configured for ISCSI storage. This window box has two IPS which are tied to ISCSI targets.

I observed following:

Below we can see two VM kernels ports:

ESXI-2-VMKERNEL-PORTS.PNG

Below we can see no VMkernel ports were bound to ISCSI adapter:

STORAGE-ADAPTERS-NO NIC_BINDING.PNG

Below we  instruct Exsi-2 to dynamically discover target 172.20.10.10:

DYANMIC-DISCOVERY.PNG

Below ESXi-2 discovers the targets :

MANY-TARGETS-DISCOVERED.PNG

Questions:

1) Above we have not bound any VM kernel ports to ISCSI software adapter but ESXi-2 has discovered targets from all all available VM kernels ports. It looks to me if we do not bind any VM kernel ports, ESXi sends ISCSI discovery messages from all VM kernel ports trying to discover specified target. is this correct?

2) Above we ask ESXi to discover 172.20.10.10  only, but  it is able to discover some additional targets 172.20.11.10,  How does ESXi come to know about 172.20.11.10?  Storage in our case has two IPS , 172.20.10.10, 172.20.11.10 . We never told ESXI about 172.20.11.10 when doing dynamic discovery.  it looks like to me Storage communicates to ESXIi all the IPS  which are configured to receive ISCSI traffic.  is this correct?

Thanks and have a good weekend !!

1 Solution

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a_p_
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  1. There are two options for iSCSI port binding. Implicit binding, and explicit binding. The latter requires to add VMkernel ports to Port binding in the iSSCI Software adapter, and shall only be used for environments where all target ports are on the same subnet, i.e. can be reached from each VMkernel port.
  2. Yes, the storage system sends all available target IPs to the iSCSI initiator (the ESXi host.

As a side note, the configuration that you've posted doesn't match what you described for vmk1. The screenshpts show vmk1 as vMotion in another subnet.

André

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3 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
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  1. There are two options for iSCSI port binding. Implicit binding, and explicit binding. The latter requires to add VMkernel ports to Port binding in the iSSCI Software adapter, and shall only be used for environments where all target ports are on the same subnet, i.e. can be reached from each VMkernel port.
  2. Yes, the storage system sends all available target IPs to the iSCSI initiator (the ESXi host.

As a side note, the configuration that you've posted doesn't match what you described for vmk1. The screenshpts show vmk1 as vMotion in another subnet.

André

zeebahi
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Thanks for your help and response.

VM1 is used for Vmotion, but when i configured software ISCSI adapter and did implicit binding, I noticed ESXI was able to discover alternate paths to Storage over vmk1.

That is what made me curios.

Have a good weekend!!

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scott28tt
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Moderator: Moved to ESXi


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