openfiler configuration

[vmshankar8]

Hi,

     how can i add storage to Esxi 6.0 using openfiler,any good videos.

[cykVM]

As far as I know Openfiler supports iSCSI and NFS, I would go for iSCSI, create a volume on Openfiler and mount the target with the software iSCSI initiator in VMWare.

See for example:http://techhead.co/how-to-configure-openfiler-v23-iscsi-storage-for-use-with-vmware-esx/

or Install and configure Openfiler for ESXi shared storage with NFS and iSCSI | VMwarebits.com

[abhilashhb]

Google and you will find hundreds of links.

Hre's one

07-Creating a Free iSCSI SAN with OpenFiler On ESXi vSphere - YouTube

[vmshankar8]

Thankyou

[PaulWestNet]

OpenFiler uses IET for it's iSCSI implementation, which doesn't play very nice with ESXi - especially if you try to connect multiple hosts to it. You'll find the iSCSI target will spit out a bunch of errors and disappear if you push too much data at it. It's been an ongoing issue for years. Google "OpenFiler ESXi iSCSI Crash" and you'll see the forum posts dating back to 2009 or so.

OpenFiler works fine as a NFS store, though, so I'd recommend that.

I had an OpenFiler high-availability cluster set up at one time (a major operation to configure, by the way), and used iSCSI to talk to it from a pair of ESXi hosts, and it was just a total disaster. I spent a ton of time tracking down the problem and trying to fix it (some people hacked in the SCST iSCSI stack to fix it). I eventually just switched it OpenFiler to NFS, and the problems went away and all was well.

If you want iSCSI, use something else. StarWind Virtual SAN (it's free, even for 2 node HA, run on Windows, easy to use), QuadStor (also free, even for HA, runs on Linux, relatively easy to use), Open-e (not free, but based on SCST, so it works, and it'll do HA), Nexenta CE (free, but no HA options without paying for Enterprise Edition), etc.

[npadmani]

IF it's about recommending something

I would go with PaulWestNet, like he said in last post

StarWind Virtual SAN (it's free, even for 2 node HA, run on Windows, easy to use)

I have tested both with ESXi6, Openfiler and StarWind, found StartWind more easy to work with, at the same time I noticed good performance.

[tshved]

I would highly recommend to use StarWind Virtual SAN. Another possibility would be QuadStor. Both are free for 2-nodes configuration.

StarWind runs on Windows, has a comfortable management console and is really easy to use. Your configuration then will look like this:

Available for download here: StarWind Virtual SAN Free

The community is really friendly, so it's always possible to get a quick answer on the support forum: StarWind Software • View forum - Forum

QuadStor runs in Linux and is linux-specific, however is still relatively easy to use.

Available for download here: Storage virtualization enterprise edition downloads

[ucsc-vmteam]

Having worked with a bunch of free NAS/SANs, but nothing super lately, here's my opinion.

The guy with the OpenFiler info is dead on. IET for the free version of OpenFiler but the paid version uses SCST and works better for ESXi.

FreeNAS and other totally free Linux or BSD based SAN/NASs use SCST and is where I would point you. FreeNAS in particular can use ZFS and has a pretty easy web gui to work in.

StarWind VSAN was almost unusably slow for real production use although our Windows guys did like working with it's interface.

NexentaStor community edition would be another ZFS based NAS built in this decade but I haven't worked with that yet.

[Anton_Kolomyeyt]

OpenFiler: "Works better" is a wrong term IET has broken SCSI-3 reservation thing so it simply does not work with VMware reliably... NFS part DOES work however. Paid version adds working SCSI-3 PR and also synchronous replication.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102659...

FreeNAS: ZFS is great but FreeBSD is stuff is more pure. Also it's not fault-tolerant unless you go paid TrueNAS (not to confuse with TrueSAN these guys went bankrupt years ago) from iX systems. Not sure do they sell it with hardware only or not...

http://www.freenas.org/for-business/

StarWind: How did you manage to make our stuff "unusably slow"? We've been breaking all performance records for years (Google is your friend). Guess some misconfiguration issue. Let me know if you want us to actually troubleshoot that and it's no FUD from competitor

http://www.vladan.fr/starwind-virtual-san-product-review/

NexentaStor: Except 18TB capacity limit, no fault tolerance they also have "no commercial use" in EULA. So be careful with it

http://info.nexenta.com/rs/nexenta2/images/Nexenta_EULA.pdf

"The Community Edition may ONLY be used for educational, academic and other non-commercial purposes expressly excluding any commercial usage.  "

ScaleIO: It's a great product from a well-known company. If you're fine with "noncommercial use" I'd suggest to take a look @ EMC ScaleIO.

ScaleIO Converged Infrastructure, Virtual SAN - EMC

Good luck!

[jbilly2002]

"OpenFiler: "Works better" is a wrong term IET has broken SCSI-3 reservation thing so it simply does not work with VMware reliably... NFS part DOES work however. Paid version adds working SCSI-3 PR and also synchronous replication."

IET has a solid SCSI-3 persistent reservation implementation althought its not relevant to ESXi since they dont seem to use it. 

SCSI RESERVE/RELEASE are not a part of SCSI-3 only but are there from the early SCSI standards and IET very well supports it.  Not a recommended way for device locking due to various limitations hence ATS by ESXi and PRs by most clustering applications.

The link which is you mention is for some implementation of Openfiler seems to be based on a  very old version of IET. Notice the resolution in the link you provided

"OpenFiler versions that utilize an IET build prior to 0.4.15 include these caveats:

• Do not support SCSI Reservations.
• Inquiry commands do not conform to SCSI Specification."

0.4.15 IET is easily more than 6 years old. Surely you cannot refer to this as a current limitation in IET code. OpenFiler and IET are not synonymous. The issues are with OpenFiler and not with IET.

[Anton_Kolomyeyt]

OK! Outdated IET being part of a free Openfiler has issues with VMware ESXi LUN locking. Up-to-date IET not used by Openfiler is immune. Openfiler uses SCST with a working SCSI-3 reservation thing as a selling point to push their commercial version. Does it sound better now?