[GRLUG] booting from iscsi target

[Mike Williams]

It's supposed to be possible with PXE, but I haven't gotten that far. So 
far, I can't even get an iSCSI initiator to connect to and mount an 
iscsi target even when there are fully functional operating systems 
involved. I intend to keep playing with it because it's neat stuff.

On 12/27/2011 07:54 AM, Kevin McCarthy wrote:
> I'm the one who was talking about booting Windows over iSCSI. Sorry 
> for the delayed response, I haven't been checking the mailing list as 
> much as I probably should for the last couple of weeks.
>
> Anyway, the only way I've made this work is to use an iSCSI option ROM 
> for an Intel gigabit NIC. All you need to do is set the iSCSI target 
> (including LUN) in the NIC's setup screen (Ctrl-A at boot, I think) 
> and then through the magic of iBFT the Windows installer will present 
> the iSCSI target in the list of installable drives and happily install 
> directly to it. Then, you select the NIC as the primary boot device in 
> the system BIOS and it boots just fine with no local disks.
>
> I'm not sure it is possible to do this without at least iBFT support 
> on the NIC, so you will need some dedicated hardware. But, Intel NICs 
> are ~$20 and you can download the iSCSI ROM for them here:
>
> http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx
>
> It's trivial to make a FreeDOS boot USB drive, and run BootUtil from 
> there to update the ROM on the NIC. At least it went smoothly for me.
>
> You can also check into iPXE if you don't have an Intel card (or even 
> if you do) but I had better luck with the official Intel ROM on my card.
>
> Good luck with this.
>
> -Kevin
>
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Mike Williams <knightperson at zuzax.com 
> <mailto:knightperson at zuzax.com>> wrote:
>
>     I've played around with it, but haven't gotten anything working.
>     The iscsi initiator (Windows 7) will recognize and connect to an
>     iscsi target (sometimes Ubuntu, sometimes Windows 2008), but I
>     can't seem to actually attach to a LUN. I'm not interested in
>     performance or dedicated hardware at this point; I just want to
>     establish that you can run a diskless workstation over iscsi.
>
>
>     On 12/23/2011 10:19 AM, scott.tanner at comcast.net
>     <mailto:scott.tanner at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>         Hey Mike,
>         Did you ever get the information you were looking for on this?
>
>         I have a little experience with an iscsi arrays, and lab'd up
>         a test environment using the Linux Target framework (tgt) on
>         one (beefy) server and the iscsi-initiator software on a few
>         clients.  My setup was a little different as it's CentOS/Xen
>         based, but most of the design principles would be the same.
>
>         Added warning - not all ISCSI systems are created equal!
>          Sadly my test environment GREATLY outperformed the Infortrend
>         ISCSI array we purchased, averaging around %40 better
>         performance for read/write block I/O (bonnie++).  After a
>         growth spurt in our QA department which doubled the VM count,
>         the ISCSI system was demoted to bulk storage and a new
>         SAS-based SAN was just purchased.  I've been told by some
>         storage specialists that many providers tweak the ISCSI
>         controllers for better throughput, apparently Infortrend does not.
>
>
>         Regards,
>         Scott
>
>         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>         *From: *"Mike Williams" <knightperson at zuzax.com
>         <mailto:knightperson at zuzax.com>>
>         *To: *"Grand Rapids Linux Users Group" <grlug at grlug.org
>         <mailto:grlug at grlug.org>>
>         *Sent: *Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:48:02 AM
>         *Subject: *[GRLUG] booting from iscsi target
>
>
>         I remember somebody on the list or at The Warehouse was doing
>         this.
>         Whoever you are, can I pick your brain on duplicating that
>         feat? I'm
>         want to get a Virtualbox Windows 7 guest to boot, first from
>         the host
>         Ubuntu 11.10 but eventually from a guest Windows 2008, to
>         prove to my
>         employer that Windows 7 will run happily disklessly.
>
>         I'm trying to learn about five new things at once here, and my
>         brain is
>         overflowing!
>
>         Thanks.
>
>
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