iSCSI in ESXi 3.5 U3 - Can't see targets

[Trav_R]

Okay, I've set up my iSCSI target on a Sun X4500, one target with two 2TB LUNs. I can see this target and its LUNs fine from either one of my VMs or my Vista workstation. I'd like to set up iSCSI through VMware, however, and I'm having trouble with it. My physical servers are Sun X6220's in a 6000 chassis. Each has two NICs available to it. My plan is to use one NIC for general traffic and the other for iSCSI traffic. The default network configuration for my server uses only the first NIC, and has the management port and my two vm's on it. I've since created a new virtual switch using my other NIC and put a VMkernel port on it, using the same subnet as my X4500 storage server. I've enabled my iSCSI adapter and added the 4500 as a server. However, after multiple rescans and a couple reboots, I still can't get it to see my target. I'm not real sure what my options are at this point. I'd like to be able to check and see if my server even has basic connectivity to my 4500, but I'm not sure how. It should, by all rights, but with my current symptoms I'd like to be sure. I've seen in some online guides mention of a console that I can enter commands into, but I don't know how to get to it. Any ideas?

[Trav_R]

Mike: More progress, can now see three LUNs, but there are a total of 10 1TB LUNs in my target. When I listed the properties of iscsitgt, I didn't get anything that involved the backing-store, so I just wiped all my target LUNS and rebuilt them. I think I'd have had to do this anyway since I needed to resize my volumes down to 1TB. So, to recap, I deleted all target LUNs, destroyed my volumes, rebuilt my volumes (9 1TB volumes with a 300G leftover volume) and recreated my target with 10 LUNs. Also created a tpgt and added both of my NICs and my target to it. I haven't dealt with acl yet since you said it could wait until I got it halfway working. Upon reboot of X4500 and VMWare host, I can see LUNs 0, 8 and 9.

Thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it.

[mike_laspina]

When I fisrt worked with VMware and the iSCSI software stack I had to clear some static info it held on to by deleting the Target host in on the VMware initiator and then re-adding it. This deletes some entries in the vmkiscsi.conf file which it will try to find from previous discoveries of that target.

[Trav_R]

Do you mean removing the iSCSI server from the Dynamic Discovery tab? If this is what you mean I just tried that again, and rebooted afterwards, readded and rescanned, and I still get the same three LUNs. If this isn't what you mean could you please clarify what exactly you'd like me to try?

While we're at it, would you suggest I try OpenSolaris as opposed to Solaris 10? I'm not partial to either, I've just started with Solaris in general so I'm not really picky as long as it works.

[mike_laspina]

It may be prudent the re-install ESXi before anything else is done.

I am using OpenSolaris snv_98 in production and it is works fine. I have many other LAB's with various newer levels but none are Solaris 10 with iSCSI targets so you may want to try it instead.

I prefer OpenSolaris and it is supported by Sun with a support contract.

Here is what I suggest you try.

Remove the current targets all together by doing the following

Delete the current SMF cfg and import the default SMF

eg

#svccfg delete iscsitgt

#svccfg import /var/svc/manifest/system/iscsi_target.xml

Make sure you have not used the following zfs setting.

zfs set shareiscsi=on pool/iscsi/lun - this will create targets automatically.

Use 750G volumes they will give you the best balance for reservations and capacity

Create a single target with luns 0 -7

Add the target to ESXi ISCSI discovery.

Rescan and lets see what that gives us.

Consider re-installing ESXi fresh - I had to do this in two trouble shooting events where it would keep track of previous targets in some undocumented locale.

[Trav_R]

Sounds like good advice, I think I'll move to OpenSolaris at some point. Right now I'm going to take a different approach and try to install my OS straight to my server instead of going through VMWare, to see if it eliminates some other issues I was having. When I get that worked out, I will come back to VMWare and continue where I left off. Thanks for the help so far, you've done a lot for me.