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iSCSI or internet SCSI is a standard for running SCSI over an ip based network. For people familiar with this technology it basically enables you to mount remote disks over your existing IP infrastructure.
Today I setup a simple iSCSI mount on Linux for my local windows desktop at home over my home network. Lets start with the basic terminology and requirements.
You need a Linux box with plenty of storage space, preferably with RAID and a decent network connection – 1G acting as your SAN. This will be your iSCSI target.
Then you need a Linux or Windows desktop to act as your mount point – The iSCSI initiator.
Here are some links on the web which explains this more in detail
Enterprise iSCSI for Linux
Microsoft iSCSI iniator
Building a simple iSCSI was as simple as following those links and instructions and downloading the appropriate files.
In my quick and dirty implementation I didn’t have a high performance disk setup nor a proper LVM setup to export my devices. However, the Linux Enterprise iSCSI target supports exporting files as a virtual file/block device. So I simply created an empty 10G file as my iscsi mount by using dd.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/iscsi-file bs=1M count=10240
I then exported the /tmp/iscsi-file as LUN0 in the ietd.conf file. It’s as simple as that!
Setting up the Windows iSCSI initiator was as simple as eating lettuce.
Next, I’ll be posting about setting up the Linux iSCSI initiator as that is a bit more complicated and may require more troubleshooting steps.
