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Connecting VMWare ESX 3.5 to Openfiler iSCSI storage with redundant NICs

Hi Experts,

I'm trying to configure VMWare ESX 3.5 to connect to Openfiler iSCSI storage with redundant NICs on both machines. I'm running the SAN through a Gigabit switch, without a router. Being quite new to the virtualization world, I'm in a bit over my head - I've seen the trainsignal videos and read petri.co.il's articles, yet something is still wrong. I believe the complication comes in with the additional vswitch and some specific settings in openfiler. In order to segregate my SAN traffic and to provide redundant NICs, I must use a new vswitch, yet iSCSI requires a service console port on the vswitch it operates on. I think I did this, (see screenshot) but I haven't any success to date. i was able to get as far as "rescanning" for targets in the process of setting up iSCSI, but the scan didn't return any. I'm not using CHAP authentication, but rather limiting - I hope correctly (see screenshot) - the address range of the initiators using openfiler. Also, I'm not sure of the networking configuration on openfiler, especially the ".0" on the end of "10.1.1.0".

The IP address configuration is as follows, with everything on netmask 255.255.255.0:

Primary LAN (not SAN)
Router: 10.0.0.1
ESX Server: 10.0.0.3
Openfiler: 10.0.0.7

SAN:
Openfiler: 10.1.1.1
ESX Server: 10.1.1.2
Service Console: 10.1.1.3

Pllease let me know if there is any more information I can provide to make this easier to solve.

Many thanks in advance,
Max
vmware-network.png
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Paul Solovyovsky

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ASKER

An interesting additional piece of information: I logged into the VMware ESX Server (10.0.0.3) via putty and tried to ping 10.1.1.1 (the openfiler SAN adapters) and it returned with the message "Destination Host Unreachable" (although interesting to note that it mentioned "From 10.1.1.3 - see screenshot). I'm not sure if this a network configuration totally separate from the issue at hand, but I thought I would add it.

ping.png

ASKER

Sorry paulsolov, I didn't see you post before posting the above update. I'll look into your suggestions.

-Max

Paul Solovyovsky

No problem. If you can't reach the console that is an issue. If you get stuck I'll check one of my installs, I don't have my notes in front of me but I can get access to the configs if I need to.

ASKER

Just a note: I can still configure openfiler through 10.0.0.7 of course, the 10.1.1.1 address is the bonded SAN adapters

Paul Solovyovsky

The console on vswitch1 still needs to talk to the console on vswitch0. I'll see if I can take a look into one of my installs.

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Paul Solovyovsky

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Roshan Mohammed

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ASKER

Hi,

I just noticed this when reviewing the network configuration page: although the independent NICs are showing that a link is present, the "bond0" isn't (see screenshot).
network-openfiler.bmp

ASKER

Well, I got it to work. For whatever reason, rebooting the VMWare ESX server solved the problem. I got suspicious of a software problem when VMWare refused to remove the dynamic discovery entry of the openfiler serer in the iSCSI software initiator properties. A reboot solved the problem. Nonetheless,I am certain the information here aided me to get to the point where I was able to complete the last step to solving the problem. Because of this, I will distribute the points accordingly.

Thank you for your assistance!
-Max