FreeNAS 8.0 iSCSI – Introduction And Pre-Requisites

FreeNAS 8.0 iSCSI – Introduction And Pre-Requisites

Introduction

FreeNAS is an open source FreeBSD based NAS solution which supports various ways of sharing storage on a network including CIFS (Windows shares), NFS, and iSCSI.

iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) is an inexpensive method of providing storage over IP across LAN’s and WAN’s as an alternative to Fibre SAN attached storage.

The following articles explain how to configure iSCSI on a FreeNAS Version 8.0 RELEASE server.

For these articles iSCSI was configured to deploy disk devices to a Windows 2008 R2 Failover Cluster.

The configuration of iSCSI on a FreeNAS Version 8.0 RELEASE server can be split down in to the following sections :-

  • Configuring Access
  • Configuriing the Target Global Configuration
  • Configuring Targets and Extents

Pre-Requisites

In order to configure iSCSI on a FreeNAS Version 8.0 RELEASE server the following pre-requisites must be met :-

  • A FreeNAS Version 8.0 RELEASE installation
  • Free Hard Disks for deploying as iSCSI Disk Devices
  • At least one Network Connection

Where as iSCSI can be used to deploy disks across any network connection it is recommended if possible to have a seperate dedicated iSCSI network so that production LAN performance is not impacted.

Hardware Used

The hardware used for these articles was all Virtual Machines running on a CentOS 5.5 64-Bit VMware Server Version 1.0.8 host.

FreeNAS Server

The FreeNAS Virtual Machine hardware was configured as shown here. The server has also had the following additional hardware added :-

  • An additional Network Interface connected to an iSCSI only Network
  • Three additional Hard Drives for iSCSI Deployment

Windows 2008 R2 Servers

The Windows 2008 R2 Cluster Node servers Virtual Machine hardware was configured using the Windows 2003 64-Bit Enterprise template with the following additional hardware added :-

  • An additional Network Interface connected to an iSCSI only Network
  • An additional Network Interface connected for Cluster Heartbeat

 The installation and configuration of the Windows 2008 R2 Failover Cluster and nodes is outside the scope of these articles but are mentioned here as a reference.