So I will suggest you guys to wait for final build to release, but for testing you can go with “FreeNAS-8r7622-amd64.iso”. So lets get started with FreeNAS iSCSI configuration. FreeNAS iSCSI configuration is little bit different from OpenFiler. I am using a Virtual guest machine as my FreeNAS box & I have added 10GB of second disk which I am going to use as my iSCSI storage for my VMware vSphere server 5. Please check [Guide] Installing FreeNAS 8 on VMware vSphere 5 (ESXi 5) How to Install FreeNAS 8 on VMware vSphere 5 (ESXi 5) guide before proceed.
Open your FreeNAS URL in Web-browser e.g. http://FreeNAS-IP-Address
Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Portals as shown below. Click on “Add Portal” tab & add your portal & keep reset as default.
Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Initiators as shown below. Click on “Add Initiator”, keep all defaults & click on OK.
Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Targets as shown below. Click on “Add Target”, Enter Target Name, select Portal group ID, Initiator group ID.
Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Device Extents as shown below. Click on “Add Device Extents”, Assign Extent Name & select Disk Device as shown below.
Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Targets/Extents as shown below. Click on “Add Targets/Extents”, Select your Target & Extent & click on OK.
Go to FreeNAS services Tab & turn ON iSCSI service.
Now our FreeNAS iSCSI configuration is done, Now lets configure our vSphere 5. Login to vSphere 5 server via VI Client. Navigate to Configurations->Storage->Add Storage.
Enable iSCSI software initiator.
Click on Network Configuration tab & click on Add. Now select the VMKernel port which we created in earlier step & click on OK.
GO to Dynamic Discovery tab & Mention your “FreeNAS” server IP address & click on OK.
When prompted click on YES.
As shown below you can see the FreeNAS iSCSI disk.
Now its time to add storage. Navigate to Configuration->Storage->Add Storage,
Select option “Disk/LUN”
Select FreeNAS iSCSI Path & click next,
Select file system version, in my case its VMFS5 for vSphere 5.
Click Next.
Assign name to your Datastore,
Click on Next.
Click on Next
Click on finish.
Hello!
I have installed FreeNAS on ESXi 5. I have added a USB controller and a USB device, i.e. VMWare itself shows me the disk and is connected and online. However, I cannot see the disk in FreeNAS. I was fine till I came to the point
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Navigate to Services->ISCSI->Device Extents as shown below. Click on "Add Device Extents", Assign Extent Name & select Disk Device as shown below.
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The problem is that I cannot even see my disk. Any advice?
Hey Anonymous,
First of all thanks for reading my blog, Go to FreeNAS ssh & run "dmesg" & check whether your USB Disk is visible or not.
And go to FreeNAS web gui & Navigate to Storage->Create Volume & Check whether your USB disk is visible under member disks or not. If its visible then there is no issue to proceed further.. Hope this will help you.
Thanks!!!
I tried it last year with esxi5 server, on which I tried to install freenas8. this was ok, but when I tried to pass throug the LSI storage controller to the freenas virtual machine, because I wanted to have the ZFS directly working on the harddisks, not in a virtual vmware filesystem, that was not possible
greetings
uwe
I have created a ZVOL dataset under vol1 and created target and file extent and mapped to ESXi server. I created second dataset under same volume and created a new target and file extent. When I associate the new target to new extent the iSCSI service stops.
Now I have to delete the associate target to get the iSCSI service up.