ESXi 5 and FreeNAS 8.0.4

[jeebs01]

Hello,

I am not sure if it is late and my google-fu is failing me or what, but I migrated my host to ESXi 5 and am having iSCSI connection issues. I am running FreeNAS-8.0.4-RELEASE-p3-x64 (11703) and VMware ESXi 5.0.0 (didn't have update 1 around currently). I saw that there was a 8.0.2 RC1 that fixed the issue (http://support.freenas.org/ticket/690) Running 8.0.4, so that shouldn't be an issue.

FreeNAS was working to ESXi 4.1 without issue. Multi-pathing, the whole 9 yards. When I add the FreeNAS IP address to the software iSCSI adaptor's dynamic tab, it seems to detect the store as it adds a reference to the static tab after a scan. I have attempted to use a single interface through the modification the portal selection and attempted to to remove network restrictions in initiators without luck.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have not tried running the nightly build at this time.

Thanks!

 

[praecorloth]

I've been seeing this of late myself. Given the other dick moves VMWare has been making, I'm suspecting that they've changed something in ESXi 5 that makes it dislike software iSCSI solutions.

Perhaps you can give NFS a shot? I believe NFS is a VMWare kosher shared storage solution. I could be mistaken though.

 

[survive]

Hi jeebs01,

Can you clarify exactly what the problem is? Does ESX not see the LUN you are presenting?

I've been running ESXi 5.0\u1 since it came out with a LUN presented over iSCSI with multipathing & everything.

-Will

 

[jeebs01]

Hello Everyone,

So, not a FreeNAS issue. I appreciate the reads.

The software iSCSI initiator within ESXi 5 is different than in ESXi 4. They rewrote it so that layer 2 adjacency is required between the target and initiator. (i.e. same subnet) Additionally, if you plan to use MPIO, you cannot bind the iSCSI adapter to an interface.

So I suppose it was VMware changing things, although I am not sure of the reasoning behind the decision to limit the product. I have my guesses, but I will stop prior to digressing :).

Thanks!

 

[praecorloth]

Awesome. Do you have a link for that information?

Also, VMWare is a big fan of limiting ESXi. I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It's so fscking frustrating. On the one hand it's like they want to bring their product to smaller businesses with their pricing model. On the other hand, they seem to want to limit their product from being run on hardware that smaller businesses can afford. Irritainment.

 

[survive]

Hi jeebs01,

You can bind iSCSI to a particular NIC or NICs, it's just completely unintuitive how you do it.

I think the trick (or at least the way I did it) was to make some new vswitches with VMkernel ports then add them under "Storage Adapters" -> "Network Config".

-Will

 

[jeebs01]

Hello,

I do not recall the link specifically for the changes in iSCSI in ESXi 5, I imagine it is in the release notes somewhere. I enjoy ESXi. Period. I just didn't read the changes prior to installing. I started looking into ESXi 5 changes after I tested an OpenFiler installation that did not connect successfully. FreeNAS is new to me, while I have used OpenFiler for some time.

@ survive - I do have a seperate vSwitch with a vNic connected. I was attempting to bind it in the software iSCSI initiator under Storage Adapters.

Thanks!