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The Real (and Virtual) Adventures of Nathan the IT Guy:

iSCSI

Sep 17 2009   12:05AM GMT

Openfiler, Free and Opensource



Posted by: Nathan Simon
iSCSI, HP MSA, HP All-In-One, vcp-310, openfiler, open source iscsi appliance, VMWare workstation, Petri, ESX Server, ESX 3.5, ESX 4, vsphere, iSCSI target

I am back in the books after being un-prepared for VCP-310 and was needing some iSCSI practice, well i dont have an MSA or HP All-In-One laying around so i improvised. My buddy Raj ( he has a blog on here also) pointed me to a program called Openfiler. I was able to create a VM on VMware Workstation, install Openfiler, and then create an iSCSI target for my ESX Box. Worked like a charm. Since I had never used this product before, I used this Petri Article, “Use OpenFiler as your Free VMware ESX SAN Server”. Read through it all, its a 2 part post.

Just wanted to share my awesome experience of configuring an iSCSI target out of a laptop and virtualization components!

NS

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Feb 22 2009   9:57PM GMT

ESX Upgrades



Posted by: Nathan Simon
ESX Upgrade, ESX 3.02 to 3.5 update, Integrated Lights Out, HP ILO, iSCSI, virtual media applet, DRAC, direct remote access

I just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know that an ESX Update isn’t as painful as one would think. Just yesterday I took control of one of my clients ESX Servers from home via ILO(Integrated Lights Out. HP’s technology for Direct remote Access) and mounted the ESX 3.5 Update 3 ISO via the virtual media applet, shut the server down via Ilo, booted up from the ISO, and started the upgrade. Everyone always ask the same question, “What about my VMFS and Virtual Machines?” From my new found solid experience with the ESX Updater, I can safely say not to worry. The ESX Installer will find the ESX Installation and upgrade ESX while maintaining all Virtual Machines and configurations. Mind you all my tests and actual implementations were on Servers with local storage, no iSCSI. And I know there have been issues for many users, ie iSCSI Targets disappearing after ESX Update. a quick google search will lead you to many different scenarios and solutions. The one issue i did run into was a SCSI Tape drive that was mounted in the main DC, i just had to quickly edit the machine configuration and select the HP Tape Device, for some reason some obscure device was mounted(old target ID i guess), either way once that was fixed, all the VMs booted fine, and I was back in business. Any questions or concerns, you know where to find me :)

NS

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