[GRLUG] booting from iscsi target

[scott.tanner at comcast.net]

Can you give us some details on your setup - like which target software you're using, backing store, if you're using authentication.... 

Just for reference, here are the commands I used for sharing an LVM volume on host fsx to a client (CentOS to CentOS) 

On fsx: 
/etc/init.d/tgtd start 
tgtadm --lld iscsi --op new --mode target --tid 4 -T iqn.201212.net.testing:fsx.lv.iscsi.client # Create target 4 
tgtadm --lld iscsi --op bind --mode target --tid 4 -I ALL # Open to all IPs 
tgtadm --lld iscsi --op new --mode logicalunit --tid 4 --lun 1 --backing-store /dev/mapper/vg01-iscsi # Assign LV 
tgtadm --lld iscsi --op show --mode target 

On client: 
/etc/init.d/iscsid 
iscsiadm --mode discovery --type sendtargets --portal fsx 
iscsiadm --mode node --target $target_name --portal fsx --login 
iscsiadm --mode node 

Regards, 
Scott 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Williams" <knightperson at zuzax.com> 
To: "Mailing List for LUG in greater Grand Rapids, MI area." <grlug at grlug.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 6:17:08 PM 
Subject: Re: [GRLUG] booting from iscsi target 

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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