accessing iscsi san from esx server

[wb2]

I haven't received my production servers yet, so i'm testing esx server on an older Dell 2850. I currently have ESX 3.5 installed on the server hard drive. My test plans are to create a volume on my equallogic san, and then start creating vm's on it. It currently has 2 nic cards in it. My problem is, how do I access the SAN from the ESX host? I've created the volume, etc, but from within VirtualCenter when I go to add storage, nothing appears. The IP addresses that are allowed access to the volume are setup correctly. I even tested on from a software iscsi initiator from Windows XP.

My other issue is that I'm reading in several tutorials about booting ESX from SAN. When I first read this I assumed this meant booting the VMs from the SAN But does that really mean ESX is not installed on the USB flash drives many servers come with now in order to hold the ESX o/s? Am I able to store the ESX o/s itself on the SAN as well? This way it would be 100% baremetal. ESX wouldn't be sitting on local spinning drives or built in flash drives either?

[Kevin_Gao]

Check your ESX server to make sure your firewall allows iSCSI through.

ESX can be booted from SAN if your HBA supports it. i.e.: You're running iSCSI HBA and not using software iSCSI. If you want to embed ESX then you're talking about ESXi or 3.5i which can be in a USB form factor.

[JohnADCO]

I take it you mapped your storage / lun / virtual disk on your Equalogic?

If so, go to the iSCSI storage tab and choose rescan. Your targets whould show up there showing all redundant paths.

[wb2]

I tried the "rescan" and the firewall setting also has the iscsi initiator checked. Is there anything else I can do?

[JohnADCO]

So you see the vmhaba targets in storage adapters - iSCSI? Every disk mapped to the host / host group on the san should show up on each discovered target path.

No reason to go to add storage if that isn't working.