Trying to give vm's access to iscsi storage

[Crowdedisland]

I recently added a Netgear ReadyNas Pro Business Edition to my network. I connected 1 nic from it to my ESXi server. I was able to setup iscsi and get the esxi server to recognize it and create a datastore.

What I really wanted was a way for the individuals vm's to use the iscsi storage for backups. DId I set this up incorrectly or do I still need to do something on the vm's to make this happen?

Thanks

[weinstein5]

You will need to configure the VM operating system to access the storage - for example if it is an MS O/S you will need to configure the MS software iSCSI intitiator

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[Crowdedisland]

In my sbs 2003 vm I am tring to use the iscsi intiator from control panel to connect but it fails. Can it be because I already setup vkernel and added a datastore suign the iscsi storage or is this the correct process?

[weinstein5]

Are you able to ping your iSCSI device from your SBS server? Do you have additional storage presented that you can format as an NTFS partition?

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[Crowdedisland]

Yes I want to use it from my sbs server. I cannot ping the iscsi becuase right now I only have it configured with a single nic.

I guess I need to add a second nic to the sbs server on the same network as the iscsi to make it work?

So if I don't wnat to use the iscsi as a daatastore should take that off or is it require to make it available to the vm's?

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

If you do not want to use the iSCSI datastores to hold your VMs then you do not need to make accessible to your ESX's vmkernel - you would not need to add a second NIC if everything is plugged into a common switch - but if it is on a different segment then for your SBS server you would need to virtual NICs each on different segments -

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[DSTAVERT]

If you want to add an iSCSI drive to your VMs you would also need to create space and an iSCSI connection for each VM .

Another way to do this is to directly allocate a second drive to the VM from within the VI client. Just edit the settings for each VM and add a disk drive making sure to point to the ESXi iSCSI datastore. You can do this hot. Once you have created the drive it will be available in whatever OS you are using. You may need to rescan disks to get it to recognize the new drive.

[Crowdedisland]

That was exactly what I was looking for. This way I can use the iscsi storage from the vm and use it for vm storage. Perfect

thank you so much