System Configuration and Management — Configure a system as an iSCSI initiator that persistently mounts an iSCSI target

Wonderful iSCSI – the cheap mans method of SAN connectivity. A quick update on terminology – iSCSI initiator is the client who initiates the connection, iSCSI target is the server providing the storage.

The first thing to do is setup an iSCSI target – this is not a role provided by redhat out of the box, and the exam objective doesnt seem to state that it is expected. The easiest method I have seen of setting up a target is to use openfiler (http://www.openfiler.com/) its a quick install and a fairly easy configuration. There is a nice walkthrough at http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-configure-openfiler-v23-iscsi-storage-for-use-with-vmware-esx that details how to setup the filer for iscsi.

Once setup, we now need to configure the iSCSI initiator. There is a great article on doing this at http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/rhel-centos-fedora-linux-iscsi-howto.html

STEP 1: Install necessary packages
yum install iscsi-initiator-utils
service start iscsi

STEP 2: Configure initiator
Execute iscsiadm -m discoverydb -t sendtargets -p 192.168.10.1 -D to perform the discovery
Use fdisk to view all partitions and identify the new disk fdisk -l (should be something like /dev/sdb)
Use fdisk to create a partition, then execute mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 to format it as ext4

STEP 3: Make the disk mount persistent
Execute chkconfig iscsi on
Because the device name can change between reboots, redhat suggests to mount the partition by using the UUID, execute ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid, to find the uuid of the new disk
Edit /etc/fstab to configure the disk to mount on startup (should already be an example for /boot)