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Jay Thomas
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iSCSI storage problem on ESXi 6.0 and windows

Hi all.
I had a working setup but after the failure of my single virtual ESXi server (WMware work station, deploy ESXI. Install vSphere and add the virtual ESXi server), i have problems.
Basically i cannot add a data store to the ESXI server - it doesn't see anything. I've done this more than a few times previously but wanted to get my logic checked. Here's my setup
Storage host is 2012 R2 physical. VMware work station is installed on the same server.
1. I added iSCSI target (windows on the same s2012 R2 server) and included the IP address if ESXi as the initiator.
2. Created iSCSI target making sure the initiator was correct.
3. From ESXi i can ping the iSCSI target server IP address
4. In ESXi and storage adaptor i choose dynamic target adding the IP address of teh Windows server.
5. If i rescan adaptors and then try to add the dataastore it simply doesn't show up as an option.

It seems VMware is an unforgiving beast and that when something goes wrong, after it was working, you have to trash the lot to get it to work. Any tips appreciated.
StorageVirtualizationWindows OSVMware

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Jay Thomas

8/22/2022 - Mon
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Pete Long

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Jay Thomas

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Hi Pete. When i configure the storage adaptor do i need to populate the network tab of the initiator? Let me get a screen shot and come back.
SOLUTION
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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Jay Thomas

ASKER
Hi, yes i did. That's the odd thing, I set this all up yesterday with actually 2 ESXi servers and attached both to the iSCSI no problem. I seems like some sort of caching issue on the Windows target perhaps.
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

is the LUN present under Storage Adaptors ?

did you also check using vmkping, and not ping ?

there is no need to add a datastore, as you've already created one! That option should be "add new datastore." or "format new datastore", as it has already been formatted the lun with VMFS
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Jay Thomas

ASKER
Hi both. Managed to get iSCSI attached. In terms of why i had issues i don't know but I'll summarise here.
When i created the environment the first time i created an iSCSI target in 2012R2. And on the Storage adaptor i chose dynamic discovery adding the IP address of the iSCSI target only. I did this on 2 ESXi servers - worked both.

When i tried to re-attach i did exactly the same thing, but on scanning, the LUN was not detected by VMware on either host. So this time i included a static entry on the storage adaptor along with the IQN of the target and it worked.

I know i'm not teaching anything anything new here, but lesson learnt from my side is not to rely on dynamic discovery.
Thank you both.