No iSCSI target found in ESX 3.5

[nasterizer]

Basically I have a HP DL380 G4 running RHEL 5.2 with an OpenFiler RPM for the iSCSI target connecting through my Server Farm LAN to a HP BL480c blade enclosure. I have enabled security on ESX and added the iSCSI target machine but I still cant see any targets. The LUN sizes are 1.5 and 1.2 TB. Its really driving me crazy and I havent found any good documents in terms of troubleshooting. Anyone got any ideas?

[weinstein5]

If you are using the software initiator you will have to create a vmkernel port and service console port that can access your iSCSI target - you need to do this in addiiton to opening the iSCSI port 3260 on the service console

[nasterizer]

Your right but that I had already done that. I created a seperate switch for the vkernel. everything is pingable from each other. What I was thinking right now is should there be a direct connection between both machines instead of using my production LAN for iSCSI?

[weinstein5]

so you are able to ping your iscsi target with vmkping and ping form the service console and you have opened the iSCSI port through the firewall - these typically are the probline that prevent connecting to iSCSI targets - best practice in IP Storage (NAS/iSCSI) networking is to place on an isolated network and not share it with anything -

[nasterizer]

Heres an update of what I have done. I configured a second port on my blade enclosure for the specific blade that I need to connect to iSCSI and connected that directly to my iSCSI server. These NIC's are Gigabit. Now connectivity was correct and dedicated. The problem I found was with the iSCSI arget naming convention which had been changed from the default of ESX. Once corrected, I was able to see the LUN through ESX. Now when I created a storage location from that LUN onto ESX and began to deploy a template to it, IT WAS SLOOOW. It took me about 2 hours to clone a 25GB XP Image. I was surprised since the connectivity was point to point.

Any Clues?